This Week for Graduate Students: Teachers’ Lounge, Job Market Resources, LTF Events
Evolving Teaching Spaces
The pandemic has driven rapid reconfigurations of public spaces. In addition to educational institutions, offices, government services, museums, and entertainment venues now operate very differently from the way they did in 2019. What inspiration might we take from such spaces for rethinking classroom logistics and engagement? What approaches to community-building, information-sharing, and public safety might we bring back into the classroom in the service of more effective learning? Join us to share insights and perspectives.
Date & Time: Tuesday, October 26; 12:10 – 1:25 pm
Location: 212 Butler Library
Register: here
Approaching the Job Market Resources
Intro to the Teaching Statement
The CTL has designed this self-paced resource to introduce you to the teaching statement—one of the most frequently requested teaching materials on the academic job market—and help kickstart the writing of your first draft. Access module.
Intro to the Diversity Statement
Diversity statements are often deeply personal and, as a result, can take a lot of time and effort to craft, elaborate, and revise. The CTL has designed this self-paced resource to introduce you to the diversity statement as a genre and help you begin the process of ideating and crafting the first draft of your statement. Access module.
Intro to the Teaching Portfolio
This module is designed to support you in compiling your teaching portfolio, a set of materials that complements your teaching statement to represent your teaching. This self-paced resource is designed to help kickstart the assembly of your portfolio and to support you as you continue to add to and iterate on it in the future. Access module.
Teaching Conference Support
Current Columbia doctoral students are invited to apply for funds to help defray travel and other expenses associated with attending a conference or training focused on teaching practices in higher education. Approved applicants will receive up to $750 for attending a conference or training that helped them develop as instructors or explore discipline-based educational research (DBER).
Learn more and apply.
Upcoming LTF Events
The 49 2021-22 Lead Teaching Fellows are running workshops and discussions in departments all around Columbia. These are generally advertised locally. Below are a few upcoming events that are open to participants beyond the LTF’s home department.
LTF events count towards track completion in the Teaching Development Program.
Reflections on a Year and a Half of Online Teaching and Learning
The long-standing mission of inclusive pedagogy is to adapt the classroom towards providing the space necessary for all students to succeed and feel included in the learning process. Anecdotally, the strain the pandemic put on our personal and academic lives often inspired the empathy necessary for those inclusive practices, even if they were only implicitly in place. This session will be a discussion of how we make those implicit expectations explicit policies in the in-person classroom.
This event is led by Lead Teaching Fellow John Thorp (Psychology). All graduate students are welcome, regardless of discipline.
Date & Time: October 27th, 4:00–5:00pm
Location: Online
Join: https://columbiauniversity.zoom.us/j/99263879863
Smart Moves: Embodied Learning, Scaffolding, and Feedback
An in-person workshop on embodied learning and constructive feedback joining martial arts practice with a discussion of pedagogical strategies. “Smart Moves” interrogates and emphasizes the significance of “in-person” teaching and learning in the contemporary classroom. This workshop will begin with embodied practice: participants will learn self-defense techniques from Krav Maga. We will then join the physical and theoretical through applied analysis and discussion of lesson planning and classroom assessment techniques.
This event is led by Lead Teaching Fellow Elaine Wilson (Slavic Languages). It is open to all graduate students, regardless of discipline.
Date & Time: October 28th, 12:30–2:00pm
Location: TBD
Register: contact evw2110@columbia.edu
Working with an Inherited Syllabus
Whether as a TA or as a full instructor, we may occasionally (or often!) be tasked with teaching a syllabus that we did not make. These inherited syllabi can be outdated, reflective of decades old disciplinary approaches, and even implicitly marginalizing. Additionally, early career scholars often have little means to officially alter them. Together we will explore the possibilities and limitations of teaching with, against, and around problematic syllabi.
We will spend the first portion in groups generating possible ways to inflect an inherited syllabus both as an instructor and as a TA, and then convene all the attendees to share these methods, compiling them into a shared and shareable resource. Attendees will be expected to bring initial thoughts—either on the dilemmas posed by inherited syllabi, or strategies to overcome them—to the event.
This event is led by Lead Teaching Fellow Sam Stella (Religion).
Date & Time: October 28th, 2:40–3:50pm
Location: 80 Claremont Ave
Register: here
Integrating Technology and Online Teaching Practices into In-person Language Classrooms
Since the effectiveness of language teaching largely depends on diverse means of participation/communication and accessible visual/aural support, instructors often put a lot of effort into making class materials accessible and productive in the online environment and experimenting with new technologies and learning management systems. Similarly, the return to in-person teaching entails new challenges.
This workshop will provide a space for language instructors to share experiences and resources, troubleshoot issues, and reflect on the following questions: What are some tools, practices, and considerations related to participation and accessibility that you have incorporated into online teaching and plan to bring to in-person teaching?
This event is led by Lead Teaching Fellow Xiran Lu (Germanic Languages). It is open to all graduate student language instructors.
Date & Time: October 28th, 4:10–5:40pm
Location: Hamilton 313
Register: Registration form
Accessible and Inclusive Teaching through Universal Design for Learning (UDL) in the Classroom, Lab, and Field
How can we make our classrooms as relevant, inclusive, and accessible to our students as possible? Universal Design for Learning (UDL) offers a framework for designing learning experiences that includes all students by offering multiple means of representation, expression, and engagement.
In this workshop, participants will be introduced to the principles of UDL and see examples of how UDL can be implemented in the classroom, lab/discussion section, and field contexts. There will be an opportunity for participants to practice applying UDL to their own instructional materials, so please bring an assignment, lesson plan, or syllabus you are working on (we will workshop these in small groups, so please attend even if you do not bring any materials).
This event is led by Lead Teaching Fellow Janine Birnbaum (Earth and Environmental Sciences) and is open to all graduate students.
Date & Time: November 3, 1:00–2:30pm
Location: Online
Register: Registration form