Teaching Talks: A Pedagogy Series for Visiting Faculty
The Teaching and Learning Institute (TLI) and the Bryn Mawr College Provost’s Office offer this forum to support visiting faculty in making the most of their time at the college.The series will not advocate any particular pedagogical approach or consist only of nuts-and-bolts workshops. Rather, it is intended to be a space within which you can engage in the serious intellectual and emotional work of developing as a teacher. The sessions are designed to: facilitate open, critical, and constructive dialogue about the liberal arts college as a unique educational environment; affirm your important role in the learning of Bi-Co students; and support you in making the most of your time here as a visiting faculty member. These semi-structured conversations will be held online to maximize accessibility.
What does participation entail?
Options for Participation
- Drop in: These sessions are entirely optional, offered to those who wish to be in conversation about teaching in this context. You may join all sessions or drop in for those that are of particular interest.
- Seek Certification of Completion: If you wish to earn a certificate of completion, you will need to participate in 12 of the 14 sessions (ideally all 14!) and submit a short portfolio that includes brief responses to all guiding questions completed each week and an overall reflection in which you look across the responses and offer an overview of what you are taking forward from your participation in the forum.
Each session will have a topic (listed below) to be used as a jumping off point, but the teaching talk can go wherever would be most useful to those who are present:
| Week 1: What are your hopes and goals for your time at Bryn Mawr or Haverford College? How do you plan to create learning structures and spaces that are productively challenging as well as inclusive and responsive? |
| Week 2: What is your understanding of how learning works? Who are the learners in your class, and what do you (need to) know about them? |
Week 3: What rhythm and what strategies are you finding for managing your multiple responsibilities as a visiting faculty member and a person with interests and responsibilities beyond teaching? |
| Week 4: In what areas/ways do you see your students engaging/developing? What are you as a teacher doing to support this engagement/development, and what concerns, if any, do you have about how your courses are unfolding? |
| Week 5: In what ways do you plan to affirm and in what ways adjust your approaches, based on student feedback and your own self-assessment thus far? |
| Week 6: What kind of midsemester feedback might you gather from students? |
| No meeting during Fall Break |
Week 7: In what ways do you plan to affirm and in what ways adjust your approaches, based on student feedback and your own self-assessment thus far? |
Week 8: What are you clarifying for yourself about your priorities and commitments as a teacher? What similar and different responses do you now have to the question: What are your hopes and goals for your time at Bryn Mawr or Haverford College? |
| Week 9: In what ways are your approaches to assessment and evaluation aligned and/or misaligned with your pedagogy and the learning goals you have for your students? |
| Week 10: What have you affirmed and what have you revised regarding your understanding of how learning works, both in general and specifically for the learners in your courses/labs/studios? |
| Week 11: What are you finding energizing? exhausting? surprising? inspiring? What can you do or seek to sustain your energy and efficacy for the rest of the semester? |
| Week 12: In what ways are you moving toward becoming the teacher you want to be in this context? What do you think is specific to this context and what do you think might be transferable? |
| Week 13: What approaches might you take to developing and revising courses for next semester, next year, or beyond? What kind of closure do you plan for students enrolled in your courses/labs/studios? |
Week 14: What understandings and commitments do you want to take forward from this semester in relation to yourself as a teacher and your pedagogical practice? |
Participant Perspectives
“Through these meetings, I felt like I was exploring what it is (and feels like) to teach at Bryn Mawr, not in isolation but with a wonderful crew of fellow travelers. I was pushed to think critically about my pedagogy, and I never felt alone in experiencing the struggles and celebrating the successes brought by the semester.”
“I felt like I was not alone in our unique struggles in wanting to build something meaningful and impactful with our students while balancing that with the stress our precarity and juggling the constant uncertainty on the job market. I felt supported by BMC even though I am only a visiting faculty member for the most part because of this program, it meant a lot to me.”
“Creating a community of people in a similar boat was really game changing both for my teaching and my sanity in this first semester. In addition to stimulating good deep conversations about pedagogy's lofty aims and challenges, our conversations also provided a lot of concrete interventions, ideas, and strategies for teaching effectively here at Bryn Mawr, from concrete feedback questions, group discussion frameworks, evaluation strategies etc.”
"I have gained new insights into pedagogical practices that enhance the classroom experience for both the students and me as a professor. Hearing different ways that others grapple with similar issues has also been incredibly helpful in not only generating new ideas, but also knowing that I am not alone in my experience and do not have to have it all figured out just yet."
"Taking the time to reflect on one's teaching can be the last thing on the week's to-do list, and while integrated into the planning of the next class or next week of the course, this weekly space is designed just for this. I appreciate this course as a part of the architecture of my weekly calendar."
How do I participate?
Contact Alison Cook-Sather, Director of the TLI, at acooksat@brynmawr.edu with any questions or concerns.