|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE business of our business is teaching. In an era of increasing specialization, teaching binds us academics together. While some of us teach language and literature, others among us teach young people how to teach. Most of us do both, although we frequently teach others by example rather than through formal courses. In fact, many of us learned to teach without formal training, with a book thrust into our hands in August and a demand to cover fifteen chapters by December. We muddled along, sometimes with the fresh enthusiasm of beginners, sometimes at the expense of our unwitting students. So we continue the practice we learned, expecting our TAs to assimilate our example. But as is aptly shown by a recent issue of the Pew Charitable Trusts' Policy Perspectives , “The Business of the Business,” the moment is ripe to pay attention to how we might better form our TAs as teachers.
Washington University I wear two hats—one as a teacher of undergraduate courses in French language and literature and one as a teacher of pedagogical theory and methodology. In the latter capacity I supervise a group of some twenty graduate teaching assistants in Spanish and French. Over the years, we in the department of Romance languages and literatures have developed a course for beginning teaching assistants that consists of two prongs: theory, which is presented in a semester-long seminar, and supervised teaching, which includes peer and faculty visits, conferences, and often videotaping. Teaching assistants thus start their careers in a controlled situation. They work in elementary or intermediate multisectioned language or conversation courses directed by experienced professors and complete with syllabi, prepared tests, and regular meetings. All in all, the debut of our graduate teaching assistants is carefully orchestrated to ensure the ongoing quality of our program as well as the graceful entrance of our assistants into their own teaching careers.
Our program is similar to others around the country. When we created it in the early eighties, we consulted colleagues at the University of Michigan, the University of New Hampshire, and Harvard University. We have used their materials, adapted their courses, and generated our own ideas. But, like many of our colleagues, we are only now beginning to device an advanced program to continue the pedagogical training of those teaching assistants who have moved beyond lower-level language courses.
At the outset, my own mentor strongly objected to the idea of any formalized teacher training, perhaps in part because he was an inspired scholar who felt that teachers could best be trained by example. On the first day of class he assured us that, through the medieval tales of Chrétien de Troyes, we would be transported into a world of chivalry and ballad, of knightly conquests and menacing forests; and he was indeed successful in bringing alive the Middle Ages. Thus he exemplified the very system he espoused: each observes a professor for a semester or so, and then the professor explains the methods the TA has seen in action. That's all it takes to learn to teach, he concluded. My mentor was right—in theory. But how can we—in fact—structure a mentoring project that helps our colleagues undertake this delicate yet crucial task of “just showing, then explaining” what we do?
This paper recommends an extensive mentoring system—one that goes beyond basic pedagogical theory and supervised classroom teaching, one that is not left entirely to change, one that could be adapted to large or small institutions. To be precise, I propose a program for senior TAs with several semesters of language-teaching experience, and I suggest a set of guidelines as a framework for what will be a one-on-one project to prepare TAs for advanced-language, civilization, or literature teaching. This system offers in-depth training to senior TAs in such concrete areas as goal setting and course planning, in lecturing and discussion techniques, and in methods of evaluating students. It does, of course, depend on the availability of senior professors with a commitment to teaching and with a willingness to devote time to the undertaking. Departmental direction as well as a sense of common purpose may encourage otherwise hesitant senior professors for whom the benefits of my program remain intangible and yet consonant with-concerns for instruction throughout higher education. For students, some tangible benefits will surely follow from the initial structure: insight into the day-to-day work of an academic, intellectual exchange, an introduction to networking, and increased personal skills within a university milieu, not to mention improvement in teaching.
This mentoring system presupposes a hierarchical placement of TAs as their class assignments move from elementary language courses to progressively more advanced courses in a broader spectrum. The hierarchy in many institutions includes rewards such as titles, salary increases, or minimal supervisory roles. In foreign language and literature departments following this model, TAs usually first teach elementary and intermediate language courses, where they are essentially cogs in a wheel and have little freedom in choice of curriculum, materials, or testing and evaluation methods but have some independence in classroom style. After their formative semesters, TAs fan out into higher-level, more specialized courses, sometimes still with several sections but without the prescribed daily format of elementary and early intermediate courses. Our model then narrows in a pyramid-like shape from the largest, multisectioned, lower-level courses to the smaller advanced classes, each the single-sectioned domain of one professor.
The one-on-one mentoring I propose begins when experienced senior TAs, who ideally have passed through a pedagogy seminar and through supervised, lower-level language teaching, start to teach more advanced courses in various areas. In our department, this means advanced conversation, of which we have only one section each semester; an intermediate or advanced master grammar class; of for the PhD candidates with the most teaching experience, a preceptorial in conjunction with an undergraduate literature course. The individual mentoring, then, usually begins in the TA's fourth semester of graduate study for the PhD.
At the inception of the project, the TA-professor pairing should be the responsibility of the chair or another individual who can create as compatible a match of personality and interest as possible. In order words, this combination must never be haphazard.
I suggest a three-phase framework as a mentoring system for one semester. My own experience with a pilot mentoring project introduced me to the idea of a structure to ease otherwise artificial encounters. This structure included enough latitude so that conversation and “training” could easily diverge from the prescribed topics, and yet the topics furnished excellent starting points. I propose the following guidelines as stimuli for the meetings during the three phases of faculty member-senior TA mentoring. In the first phase, the mentor shows his or her method of course goal setting and planning, with the TA subsequently following the model to create an appropriate portion of the curriculum. The second phase focuses on classroom presentation, lecturing, and discussion. The meetings of the third phase concentrate on evaluation of papers and tests and on grading, even if the TA has no primary grading function.
The first phase needs to take place well before the beginning of the semester so that the TA and faculty members may explore the TA's role as related to the faculty member's goals. This phase necessitates that the senior professor organize ahead of time and consult with the TA. Specifically, the mentor must be ready to spell out course objectives and the methods used to devise them and then must provide the TA either with a course syllabus and reading list or with the parameters for designing such a syllabus. The professor thus explains the process of developing a semester's program and of choosing materials. The mentor must also address questions of TA responsibility and freedom in curriculum development evaluation, and teaching methods. In other words, the initial mentor-assistant encounter is a presemester planning meeting.
Another presemester meeting (ideally a week or ten days before classes begin) gives the TA a chance to present his or her part of the course to the mentor. This meeting is paired with the first as the follow-up aspect of phase one.
The second phase occurs once the semester is under way. Its focus is classroom presentation. I would encourage both mentor and TA to visit each other's classes to explore the skills of lecturing, questioning, and leading classroom discussion. Before this, in a pedagogical training program. TAs will have become accustomed to such visits and will know how to observe and how to use an observer's comments and suggestions for self-improvement. Furthermore, a mentor who comes to watch the TA teaching in a small group or in a lecture situation emphasizes his or her commitment to undergraduate learning and to the teaching assistant. Moreover and most important, mutual visits further the potential for developing a collegial bond between TA and mentor.
The third phase of meetings takes place as the semester winds down and final projects dominate student's attention. This phase focuses on evaluating student performance on papers, tests, and oral presentations. As preparation for phase three, the mentor articulates the rationale for assignments and asks the TA to do so as well. Then the mentor explains his or her methods of evaluation as a model for the teaching assistant. Even if the TA is not responsible for actual grading, as in some preceptorial situations, the mentor should provide samples of directions for papers or exams and graded examples of course work. Because sharing actual grading prove invasive or threatening to both mentor and TA, they might use previously graded work or ungraded work as a basis for discussion.
In the final phase of training, mentor and TA alike summarize and take stock of all facets of their joint enterprise. The third phase, therefore, acts as a mutual evaluation. To ensure the accountability of TA and mentor in the formal workings of the three-phase project, both report in writing to the chair or other appropriate person. My expection is, of course, that the mentoring relationship will have surpassed the formal outlines of the three-phase system proposed and will continue to develop.
While this model offers a basic framework for mentoring, it cannot legislate the desired relationship between mentor and senior TA, or can it guarantee the sort of step-by-step pedagogical formation that a seminar provides. Senior professors may lack the expertise to train TAs in advanced language teaching, for example, or the willingness to make this training effort. Nonetheless, the model gives an order to what might otherwise be an amorphous phase of TA development. It serves as an organizer for professors who rarely have to verbalize their own goals or course-planning techniques. For TAs who might be unsure about how to build rapport with faculty members, it proposes a structure.
The model, moreover, has larger educational advantages. Such a system responds to frequently cited needs in higher education in three ways. First, it formalizes, even insists on, a renewed commitment of faculty members to a new generation of teachers. The proposal envisages the professor's role not only as the model of a scholar but also as a partner in teaching, thus valorizing the business of our business. It requires that professors who have TAs working with them meet to articulate their own planning, teaching, and evaluation methods. Perhaps in the process professors will reengage themselves in classroom education, thus avoiding what Charles Sykes decries as “the professoriat's flight from teaching” (44).
Second, a structured mentoring system introduces TAs to professors in working situation before dissertation time and allows an early exposure to professional networking and collaboration. These two factors are not always made explicit to TAs and yet are essential to success within the profession.
Finally, a structured mentoring system will help women and minority graduate students who may not otherwise have assess to the normal channels of communication with senior department members and therefore to success within the profession. With few women or minority models, such TAs often feel isolated and hesitant to make overtures to faculty members; others may harbor misunderstandings or an unwillingness to accept some of the mores of academia. As Aisenberg and Harrington point out in their book, Women of Academe , “Women notoriously lack … professional counseling-guidance and instruction in the actual rules of the game. … Women suffer chronically from lack of professional mentors” (45).
By providing a mentoring system to all senior TAs, a department demonstrates its evenhandedness in dealing with graduate students as well as its understanding of “different starting points” (Aisenberg and Harrington 50) among aspiring teachers. A department opens doors to everyone, including those who are out of the mainstream. A department thus offers universal professional development to its TAs. Practically speaking, all senior TAs need increasingly sophisticated classroom strategies based on well-articulated planning and organization. While they may learn a great in pedagogical seminars and through group supervision, they need to refine and practice their skills in higher-level courses in language, literature, and civilization under the aegis of experienced professorial mentoring. At the same time, such mentoring offers the double benefit of classroom training and private nurturing in teaching, which is, after all, the business of our business.
The author is Senior Lecturer of French at Washington University. This article is based on a paper presented in 1989 at the second annual Conference on the Training and Employment of Teaching Assistants in Seattle.
Aisenberg, Nadya, and Harrington, Mona. Women of Academe: Outsiders in the Sacred Grove. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1988.
“The Business of the Business.” Policy Perspectives 1:3 (May 1989). 1–8.
Sykes, Charles J. ProfScam: Professors and the Demise of Higher Education. Washington: Regnery Gateway, 1988.
© 1991 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
|
|---|
|
|
|
