The other day I was scrolling through Twitter when I saw this tweet asking, "Am I early-career or mid-career? A Memoir." And, man, I felt that. I am arguably early-career, having only had full-time employment in higher ed for the past 2.5 years. On the other hand, I've been teaching college classes since 2009. My … Continue reading Am I an Early or Mid-Career Academic?
Teaching Tip Tuesday: Tell the Students WHAT You’re Doing
This blog is dropping later than normal because I'm wrapping up two 5 week summer WIT courses which can be...intense. This post is also Part 1 of a three part series designed to help you have a better relationship with your students. I find that a lot of issues in the classroom are rooted in … Continue reading Teaching Tip Tuesday: Tell the Students WHAT You’re Doing
Make Time for Professional Development
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
