Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · What you can change God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. (The Serenity Prayer —Reinhold Niebuhr) Whether you believe in that god or not, the sentiment of this prayer is just […]
Read More »teaching
Are you waiting for permission?
One of the attractions of an academic career is the autonomy it affords. That means no one is going to give you permission. Or, perhaps more accurately, they already have.
Trusting your judgement is hard. You risk criticism. Disapproval. Perhaps even attack. Even though criticism is an inevitable part of academic life, many academics struggle with it.
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What happened to the Life of the Mind?
For many people what’s attractive about an academic career is the opportunity to be intellectually engaged: with students, with books, with colleagues, etc. Popular cultural representations of academia twist this into an image of the professor with his mind on higher things and detached from reality. Either way what gets called “the life of the mind” […]
Read More »What if teaching really is your thing?
As I’ve said before, not all academic jobs are the same. Some people really value teaching. They do it well. They figure out how to do it better. Seeing students get it is what motivates them. They are, as Chris Atherton noted recently, “exactly the kind of person you’d want teaching your kids when they […]
Read More »Maybe I’m not crazy
Sometimes I think that you will all just think I’ve lost my mind. (cue Robbie Williams “…It was mine to give away…”) The academic labour market, heck the entire labour market, is going to hell in a handbasket and I’m telling you to think about your passion and your best contribution. I’m suggesting that you […]
Read More »Make sure sessional teaching develops your skills
If the main reason to do sessional teaching is to gain experience, you might want to be proactive in ensuring that you get the most out of it.
Teaching can be very rewarding. However, the lack of compulsory training for teaching in higher education can also contribute to frustration.
If your main source of knowledge about how to do this is how you have been taught in the past, you have limited options when things aren’t working the way you’d like them to. You might also be a bit lost if you are facing a teaching situation you rarely faced as a student yourself.
Read More »Why do sessional teaching? You need the experience
An excellent reason to do sessional teaching…
You need the experience
If you are going to make a career as a scholar in higher education, you are going to need to demonstrate that you can teach courses in your field.
It matters what course you have the opportunity to teach, though. This is also where the difference between being a TA on a course and actually teaching a course makes a difference.
Read More »Why do sessional teaching? You need the money
This post is the first in a series. Part 2 considers sessional teaching to gain experience. Part 3 looks at what to do if you decide it’s not worth it. Part 4 helps you approach sessional teaching strategically so you get the skills you need. The introduction is the same so you can start anywhere. As term […]
Read More »Teaching the lecture class
I encourage you to read this excellent post from the Tenured Radical on how to teach lecture classes well. As she puts it: The lecture class is worth learning to teach well because this is where you will build your reputation as a teacher. It is where you will recruit students into your upper level […]
Read More »Other sources of teaching-related stress
In my last post I suggested that teaching might be taking up more time than it needs because you are using more preparation to deal with anxiety. In that post, I talked about the anxiety caused by insufficient or inappropriate training for this aspect of the job and ways to get the support you need […]
Read More »If you had one more week…
A while ago on Twitter, one of the people I followed said: “Just realized Fall term lectures start a week later than I thought they did. A week more of prep time, here we come!” You might be able to guess what I replied: “Or a week free for writing!” What would you do with […]
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