Is there a specific aspect of your teaching you would like to work on? Do you have a plan of action for achieving your goal? Wherever you are in your development as a teacher, it is important to have goals and a plan for how you might accomplish them and the CITL is here to help you establish those goals.
Are you approaching your first day of teaching ever and your current goal as an associate instructor (AI) is to prepare yourself for that big day? Or maybe, you have years of teaching experience but are noticing a misalignment between your learning outcomes and what is actually happening in your classroom. Or maybe you are in your final year of graduate school and are preparing for the academic job market and you are completely overwhelmed by the documents you need to prepare for your teaching dossier. Would you like to better understand the genre expectations of a teaching statement, for example? Whatever your experiences are, the CITL offers an exciting range of opportunities and resources to support you.
For the first time since 2019 Associate Instructor Orientation (AIO) will occur in-person at the Indiana Memorial Union! Come meet and build community with your new graduate student colleagues from across disciplines who are about to embark on their first semester of teaching as an AI at IUB. AIO is comprised of workshops facilitated by your peer graduate instructors who are experienced AIs . These workshops use active learning techniques that will give you hands-on experience with methods that can be implemented in your own classrooms. The workshops are not discipline specific and are intended to reach AIs regardless of what you will be teaching.
Workshop descriptions and registration can be found at the links below:
- Learning: A Social and Cognitive Activity
- Instructor Identity, Calling-In, and Balancing Boundaries
- “We are in this Together:” Shaping Teacher-Learner Interpersonal Relationships and Communication
- A Healthy Balance: Creating Empathy and Boundaries in the Classroom for Students and Yourself
- AI Orientation Lunch
- Practical Guidelines for STEM Lab AIs
- Lead Analysis Based Discussion through Collaboration
- Creating Active Learning in Classrooms
- Teaching with Instructional Technologies in the Post-Online World: An Introduction for New AI’s
AIO is just the beginning of year-round offerings provided at the CITL to support your teaching development! Each semester the CITL offers Graduate Student Learning Communities (GSLCs) on a range of topics concerning teaching, learning, and higher education. GSLCs are facilitated spaces for a cohort of graduate students to dive deeper into a particular topic together. Through various activities participants will move beyond understanding the assigned topic and begin creating solutions for complex issues present in our classrooms. GSLCs occur within the context of a community of peers from across disciplines. This cross-pollination is often the most exciting aspect of GSLC and results in the application of melded perspectives, techniques, and innovations being used to address a particular topic in our classrooms. The brief application to join a GSLC is due by August 24th at 9 AM ET.
Attending AIO and participating in a GSLC are just two parts of a much bigger program known as The Graduate Teaching Apprenticeship Program (GTAP). GTAP is structured support for your teaching and professional development. GTAP programming is intended to supplement departmental offerings through workshops, learning communities, reflective exercises, and documentation of your teaching. It is a sequential, three level certification program open to all IU graduate students. Through participation, you are creating tangible evidence of your commitment to professional and personal growth. Even if you are not in a current teaching position but you have dreams of teaching, GTAP will give a future employer evidence of your experiences and commitment to teaching.
After completing the first level of GTAP, the Associate level, Bria Davis (PhD Candidate in Learning & Developmental Sciences) shared:
The Associate level of GTAP truly is a way to gain a more solid foundation and understanding of effective pedagogical practices. No matter what interests you have or department you are in, the GTAP community is really supportive and open to answering any questions that you may have about your current strategies that you implement or techniques that you wish to learn more about. My experience thus far with GTAP has been rewarding, and I have developed a greater sense of self efficacy in regards to increasing and sustaining student engagement.”
You can see specific GTAP requirements and begin tracking your progress on our Canvas Page.
Teaching development is an empowering process of self reflection that can lead to meaningfully and intentionally developing new and necessary aspects of your teaching. The support offered by the CITL can help you set goals and establish a plan for how you will approach teaching development as an important aspect of your graduate studies. The collaborative and interdisciplinary nature of the CITL creates a nourishing community that is ready to support you wherever you are in your graduate studies.
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