From the 2015 College of Letters & Science Teaching Fellows

Tips for Teachers

From the 2015 College of Letters & Science Teaching Fellows

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If you have questions or concerns about your teaching, please contact the

L&S Teaching Assistants Resource Center

Brian Bubenzer, Assistant Dean

, 608-265-0603
307B South Hall

1055 Bascom Mall

Madison, WI 53706-1394

Kim Moreland, Project Assistant

, 608-890-3850

307A South Hall

1055 Bascom Mall

Madison, WI 53706-1394

We produce training materials for use by L&S departments and TAs, provide TAs with information about professional development opportunities on campus, and maintain a web site with information relevant to Teaching Assistants at UW-Madison.

Check out the L&S TA Resource Center on-line!

Please give us a call or email with questions about your work as a TA!

The Reluctant Student:

Motivating Students When Teaching a Required Course

Carolyn Abbott, Department of Mathematics

Have you ever been required to take a course you’re not interested in? How did you react to a class that did not play to your strengths? What motivated you to do well? When teaching a required course, many students will be in your classroom because they have to be. However, with a little help from you, they can become active, engaged members of the classroom.

Know your audience

•Knowing who your students are will help you find connections between the course content and their interests.

•What are their majors? Their interests? Have they taken any courses that relate to yours? Try giving a survey on the first day of class. Giving them a choice of office hours on this survey can make them feel like a valuable member of the class.

•How can this course help them with their college goals? If the course is simply filling a core requirement, it may not directly help them, but think outside the box! Does your course encourage critical thinking, writing skills, or logical reasoning? All of these are important skills across disciplines. Every course they take will teach them how to think, how to learn, and how to teach, all of which are important parts of a college education.

•Be sure your students know each other, as well, particularly if your section is discussion-based. Consider using ice breakers on the first day of class, or simply have them introduce themselves.

Look for applications/connections

•At the beginning of the course, give your students an idea of the overall progression of the course. This is a appropriate place to use the syllabus to give the students a roadmap of where the course is headed. Give them the big picture of the course right away, and show them how the different pieces connect to each other. This is also a good time to discuss how the course fits into the subject as a whole.

•Don’t be constrained by the details of a particular class assignment, which may not be relevant to the students after they finish the class. Find connections to the bigger picture. How does the assignment fit into the overall course? How does it relate to other assignments in the course? How does it fit into the subject as a whole? Beyond specific facts and procedures, what do you want your students to learn from this assignment?

Keep the classroom interactive

•Most of your students already have a lecture for this course; the goal of your discussion section is to engage them in the material.

•Have them talk to each other, in pairs or small groups. Some of them will be more comfortable sharing their ideas in a small group rather than in front of the entire class.

•Challenge their ideas, and push them to think more deeply about the topic. Ask them to support their claims with evidence and to respond to their classmates’ ideas. Ask them if there is another way to reach the conclusion. Ask them to expand on a classmate’s comment.

Strive for an intellectually safe classroom

•Students will participate and feel engaged when they feel comfortable sharing their ideas and suggestions without fear of embarrassment or ridicule.

•Stay positive! Everyone will struggle at some point — even you! You do not need to know the answer to every question. Let your students see you think; show them how you approach a problem when you do not know the answer.

•Do not refer to steps or ideas as easy or trivial. Understand that many of them will struggle the first time they see the material, in particular because the course is outside their subject area.

•Share your enthusiasm! You love your subject, and your enthusiasm may be infectious and motivate them to participate.

Motivating and engaging students will go a long way towards combating frustration and confusion. A positive classroom environment helps students vanquish their anxieties about the subject, overcome their lack of enthusiasm, and encourage independent thinking. You will have students from a large variety of backgrounds, and, with a little effort and a few key techniques, this class can be one of the most interesting and rewarding to teach!

Foreign Language Classrooms: Students’ Diversity Matters

Adeola Agoke, Department of African Languages and Literature

This workshop emphasizes cultural diversity as a very rich ingredient for channeling instructions in the foreign language (FL) classroom. In this type of classroom environment, it is very easy for foreign language teachers to focus attention on the linguistic contents of the course, concentrate on some aspects of the target culture, get sufficient satisfaction in the language production of the learners,but ultimately neglect the diversity presented by the different cultural backgrounds that the teacher and the students bring to the classroom. In this presentation, we will explore the following:

How to understand the cultural atmosphere of a foreign language classroom
Discuss how the teacher and the learners can engage intercultural competence as a way to sustain meaningful classroom interaction.
How to design an interculturally relevant pedagogy
Provide answers to some interesting scenarios on students’ cultural diversity in foreign language classroom

Tip A: How to understand the cultural demography of a foreign language classroom

There are some important tips to note about the cultural diversity of a foreign language classroom

Learners may either be mono or multi cultural: Many students have experiences with one or more cultures depending on their backgrounds and experiences
The different cultural backgrounds of students in a FL classroomencourages multiple perspectives to cultural understanding
The students’ culture may diverge from or converge with the target culture

Practical steps to finding out the above tips in a FL classroom

On the first day of class, design survey questions that elicit information about the above tips
Through classroom interaction and participation, create a classroom that constitutes a community of friends and family
Ensure to design culturally driven activities that are task based and are done or performed in groups

Tip B: How the teacher and the students engage intercultural competence for meaningful classroom interaction

Most classrooms are teacher-fronted. The teacher does most of the talking while the students’ voices are less heard during classroom instructions. This kind of practice is not ideal for a foreign language classroom. Instead, the teacher should play the role of a facilitator who engages the students in the classroom discussions.

How does this play out in a culturally diverse FL classroom?

The teacher designs a curriculum that generates classroom interaction from the perspective of the students’ culture
The teacher creates tasks that raise learners’ curiosity about the target culture
Students’ curiosity would generate discussionsthat foster intercultural learning
Overall classroom experience establishes students’ understanding of their own culture, the target culture and other cultures that may be present in the classroom

TIP C: How to design an interculturally relevant pedagogy

Select a multiliteracy based theme
Flesh out the themes across units
Integrate genresthat are relevant to the cultural demography of the classroom and assign homework that prepares the students ready for class participation
Create a practice model to encourage learners’ understanding
Generate tasks that elicit students’ understanding of the different culture included in the selected genre
Students transform the classroom experience to an idea that they find most interesting about the topic of discussion

Scenarios

As a way to experience the importance of diversity in our foreign language classrooms, we will explore some of these scenarios.

You present a culture topic in the target language. However, one of your students has a contrary perspective about your presentation. In what way canyou as the teacher take advantage of the student’s perspective to facilitate rich intercultural experience in the classroom?

Youobserve that your students always revert to presenting ideas in their own culture whenever they engage in classroom discussion. Do you find this appropriate? If no, how can you get them to talk about other cultures using the target language?

Because you have a classroom that is culturally diverse, your students come to the classroom with multiple perspectives of the culture topic for the unit you are teaching. What strategy would you use to transform this challenge to a productive learning experience in your classroom?

“Relax, You’re Going to Do Great:” How to Make the Most of the First Day of Class

Richard Becker, Geoscience

Key Goals for the First Day: By the end of the first day, I want to…

Establish rapport with the students. Welcome them to the classroom. Take an interest in them (see #2). Tell them a bit about yourself. Who are you? Where are you from?
Know who the students are. What are their names? Where are they from? What are their interests? What relevant coursework have they already taken? Why are they in the class?
Begin developing a learning community. Most students should know most of their classmates names, where they are from, and a bit about them.
Introduce the students to the material. What topics are going to be covered in the course? Is there a “natural order” that we’ll be following through the semester? If so, highlight that. Why should the students be excited to be in your class?
Set expectations. Review the syllabus and be clear about what you expect from them; tell them what they can expect from you (especially with regards to when you’re available to them, etc.).

I typically find that it takes 1 hour to cover all this. The first 3 points take the majority of the time. Point 5 should always be last. When I was a brand-new TA, I was teaching a course that I had never taken before, so my sales pitch (#4) fell flat. As a result, I did not attempt it again for years. If you think that you can pull it off – go for it! – otherwise, skip #4 and wait until you are more experienced before incorporating it. It’s good to do, but not essential.

How I Accomplish These Goals: I center my first day on a “name game,” but before I give you the details, I need to say that your TAing situation may be different from mine. I have typically taught 2-3 hour long (geology and geography) labs where the professors gave me a lot of freedom (I was the only TA). As a result, I could spend 1 hour on an ice-breaker activity and still have time to cover course content. You might be in a different situation, but our goals should still be the same.

1-Be organized, be prepared, and be early. Arrive at your classroom prior to the official start time and have all your materials ready. I do not like looking out at a sea of strange faces looking back at me, all being awkwardly silent – it makes me nervous. So, if there is extra time before class begins, I wander around in the hallway and walk in the door exactly at the official start time.

2-Welcome students to the class. “Welcome to <name of class>.” Briefly introduce yourself (name, department, etc.), save the details for later.

3-Hand out 3x5 index cards. I give every student a 3x5 index card and ask them to put their name, major, year in school, and hometown on it. In addition to this, try to learn something interesting about them. Asking what they did for summer/winter break is good; you’ll get some stories that way. If you think it would be useful, ask what previous classes they have had in your subject. In addition to all this, ask them to think of alliterative nicknames. This makes learning names easier for everybody and the students generally enjoy it.

4-Have the students share their info. Once the students have had a few minutes, find a volunteer to share his or her new nickname, major, year in school, hometown, and what they did over break. From there, go around the class.

5-The “name game.” As they go around, I require every student to list the names of everybody who has gone before them. I have mixed feelings about this – it gets tedious – but it works. By the end of the exercise, you and all the students will know at least 80% (if not all) of the names. Perhaps you can find a better “name game,” but highly recommend some element of repetition.

6-Introduce yourself. Introduce yourself last and give the students a rich history of who you are. As a student, I often wondered who my instructors were. Where did they grow up? Why did they choose their field of study? When you’re done, recite all the names.

7-Collect the 3x5 cards. I save the cards and look at them periodically over the semester. Once you know your students, going back to the cards can be eye opening – you’ll learn interesting things about people! Also, I bring the cards to class, shuffle the deck, and use them to call on people when I need people to talk. All in all, the 3x5 cards are invaluable.

8-Hand out the syllabus. If you are going to do the “sales pitch,” do it now. When you are done with it, switch to reviewing the syllabus. Rather than reading it myself, I use the cards to randomly select students and have them read short passages. I then repeat and expound upon key points. Cover the entire syllabus in this fashion.

9-Time remaining?Go on to cover course content…

After the First Day: A few thoughts for the second day… and the third… and the fourth…

1-The few spare minutes before class begins are among the most useful. Once you know the students (day 2 and afterwards) use this time to chat with them. Demonstrate that you care by asking about their lives, what they have going on, etc.

2-Experiment with appropriate humor. If you have a funny story that relates to the material at hand, try it out. If they don’t laugh, change the delivery for next time or don’t use it again. Humor in moderation helps keep the students engaged.

3-Not every answer is a great answer, so don’t always say “Great!” after a student response.

4-Be friendly, but not friends with the students.

5-Passion, passion, passion for the subject – the more passion you show for what you’re teaching, the better you’ll do.

6-Think about the best teachers and professors that you’ve had. What did they do? What did you like about their classes? Are there some teachers that are almost – but not quite – this list? This is the most instructive group; they were good, but not quite awesome. Why is that?

7-Be thinking about your “teaching philosophy.” There is a good chance that someday as part of a job application you are going to have to write an essay about your teaching philosophy. There are workshops on campus to help with this (look for them). The sooner you discover your teaching philosophy, the more time you will have to generate examples of it in action. This is important because you should “pepper” your teaching philosophy with anecdotes.

8-Save all your teaching evaluations. Departments occasionally thin old records.

First Things First – Preparing for Your First Day as a TA

Rachel Thayer Boothby, Geography Department

The first day of class can be scary (for you and for your students!) but it can also be an empowering and energizing launching point for the semester. Here are some tips to help you confidently set foot in the classroom on your first day as a TA, and to begin to cultivate positive relationships with your students that will continue to grow over the course of the semester.

BEFORE THE FIRST DAY

Reflect on your experiences of teaching, whether from the perspective of teacher or student.

Think through your approach to teaching, so you can communicate it to your students. Who were your favorite teachers in the past? What was it that inspired you? How could you take lessons learned from your favorite instructors and implement them in your own classroom?
Identify your own strengths. You will bring a unique set of abilities and challenges to the classroom, just like each of your students. Are you uniquely empathetic? A questioner? Good at synthesizing information? A confident speaker? Quietly observant? There’s no one way to be a good teacher – play to your strengths.

Coordinate with the rest of your teaching team.