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Re: Advice for Tina and other rookies...



Not to be snitty...but here is a wild idea
What about a class in graduate school on teaching? I mean really teaching not just being a teaching assistant.

It would be sooo useful. Here people throw around all this pedagogy that I have never heard of and need to look up.

The large universities would consider such a course a "waste of time" for grad students who are otherwise training to become researchers. You're correct that TA'ing is not even close to real life teaching. That's a controversial statement, but it's true. TA's exist primarily as a loophole in accreditation requirements.

Several large university physics departments have courses on physics teaching
for graduate students (I helped with one at Purdue University, as did Richard
Flarend and Melissa Dancy -- and we were grad students at the time). Others
have similar courses, and have presented at AAPT. The NSF also funded the
development of a set of initiatives for preparing future physics faculty,
and the AAPT has funding for some of them, such as the Workshops for New
and Astronomy Faculty, Preparing Future Physics Faculty, and TYC21. See
www.aapt.org and click on programs for a list with links to details. There
is help out there, including funded and partially-sponsored opportunities.
These are appropriate professional development for future and new faculty,
and us more elderly canines too.

Tina, please seriously consider attending the AAPT meeting in ID, then
finding someone to sit and chat with at length about your struggles. There
are many who share your experiences (including worse, resulting on job loss)
and many who can provide insightful commentary. For what it's worth, I'd
be happy to chat with you and introduce you to some people if that helps.

Dan M

Dan MacIsaac, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Northern AZ Univ
danmac@nau.edu http://purcell.phy.nau.edu PHYS-L list owner