I'm betting that many of us entered academia because we love to learn. We were the kids who read extra books, did extra work, reveled in intellectual conversations. And yet in modern higher ed, many of us are in precarious, overworked and underpaid positions that offer little time or funding for regular professional development. It's … Continue reading Make Time for Professional Development
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Incremental Course Design
I recently wrote about establishing boundaries for teaching which has become even more important to me over the past year. One of the boundaries I've come to very recently is redesigning courses bit by bit instead of in huge overhauls. Look, I am on a 9 month contract, so it makes no sense that I … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Incremental Course Design
My Low-Key System for Managing Academic Projects
As promised in my summer planning post, here is a description of the method I use to track my various projects. This method was originally inspired by two academic Gantt chart enthusiasts (one, two). However, I found that the traditional way of setting up a gantt chart (with the projects on the left and "steps" … Continue reading My Low-Key System for Managing Academic Projects
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Do You Teach Like You Were Parented?
Today's post is more of a reflection exercise than a tip, but I think this is an important question to ponder. The other day I was telling someone about my mother's parenting philosophy, saying, "Her expectations for us were always very clear, but she largely left it up to us to figure out how we … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Do You Teach Like You Were Parented?
Schedule Time to Think
Years ago I was accepted into an NEH Summer Institute, and one of the biggest takeaways from that experience was the revelation of dedicating time to think. At the time I was an overworked and underpaid adjunct Lecturer and unfunded graduate student, so a week of paid thinking time rocked my world. This is also … Continue reading Schedule Time to Think
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Boundaries
The past few weeks I've seen so many posts about burnout that it made me wonder about how academics in particular (and everyone in general) conceptualize their boundaries around work. Academics receive little to no instruction (depending on your advisor) about establishing healthy work boundaries in graduate school, and then, I suspect, this tendency to … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Boundaries
Summertiming: Planning Your Academic Summer
For those of us in the Northern hemisphere, Summer 2021 is now upon us---although someone forgot to tell the weather in the mid-Atlantic (not that I'm complaining about 70 degrees, zero humidity, sunshine, AND the delayed onslaught of cicadas). For academics, this is a season of emotions - relief and excitement, frustration and anxiety. While … Continue reading Summertiming: Planning Your Academic Summer
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Getting >75% Response Rate for Virtual Student Evals
Let me preface this post by acknowledging that student evaluations are problematic (especially as a measure of teaching excellence) because they can be abelist, racist, sexist, and xenophobic--not to mention irrelevant to the actual teaching. I myself have received creepy comments about my lips and complaints about the quality of desks in the classroom. They … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Getting >75% Response Rate for Virtual Student Evals
Listen up! Academic Podcast Roundup
A few years ago, back when I still had a long commute, I started listening to podcasts to reduce my driving-related stress. I live in a congested area, and driving, while necessary for my job(s) at the time, felt like such a waste of time. But podcasts transformed these periods into little relaxing learning bubbles … Continue reading Listen up! Academic Podcast Roundup
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Save the Praise
I keep a folder titled "Student Praise" in which I save emails from students praising their experience in my class. This might seem like an obvious thing to do for "demonstrating teaching excellence," but I only just started doing it a couple years ago. I figured if no one has ever told me I should … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Save the Praise
