This week wraps up our team introductions. Next week we launch into our regularly scheduled programming (details below), which we hope will be of use to you: valuable not just in your quest to become a better teacher, but also as a source of ideas, discussion, and community as you develop as a graduate student, scholar, and individual. We’d love for you to contribute a thought, a question, or a response to someone else’s question. Leave a comment anytime or send email to gata@uwindsor.ca

So now, introducing Candace Nast, Digital Outreach Coordinator for the GATA Team:

As far as formal education goes, I have an undergraduate degree in Women’s Studies and an MA in History. I’m currently a sessional instructor in History and Women’s Studies and I also work as a web developer and social media specialist. My passion is using online tools to map social history and I’m always looking for new ways to show and share how people’s lives have changed over time.

I’ve had a lot of different jobs. To help me keep track of where I’ve been and what I’ve done, I keep a master spreadsheet of every job I’ve held since high school. I’ve worked as a clown, in a library, composed folk opera, done copy-editing and breastfeeding counselling, taught classical ballet, designed and sewn costumes, organized conferences, worked in dinner theatre and children’s theatre, managed online communities, been a guest speaker, a TA, a photographer, a web consultant, and most recently, a sessional instructor. While it might seem a diverse list, the truth is, a lot of the skills required for each job overlap. Certainly, the domains might be different, but the ability to express an original thought, communicate a point, find creative solutions to problems, and nurture new ideas are common to all.

In each position I’ve held, whether it’s been in a place of paid employment or in my everyday life, I’ve learned skills that have helped me with my teaching. I think about teaching and learning in broad terms so it’s easy for me to see how much of learning takes place outside the classroom. Learning to make a phone call, learning to cook, learning to walk, talk, tie our shoes — many people learn these things without formal instruction. To learn these things, most people probably don’t choose a school, sign up for a course, and attend sessions for a series of weeks. There probably isn’t homework, a designated instructor, or an exam. But yet people learn them.

Think about the list of skills in bold above:

• express an original thought
• communicate a point
• find creative solutions to problems
• nurture new ideas

Haven’t we all done these things? Isn’t this what teaching and learning is about? As teachers, we help our students develop their abilities to think, evaluate, express, and hopefully we want this process to continue after students leave us. We can draw from our experiences teaching and learning outside the classroom to help our students. For example, think about how you might teach a child to drink from a straw, then use this the next time you’re demonstrating a technique in your lab. How would you break it down for the child? What are the first things to know? What do they have to understand before they can get the liquid up the straw? How much information can they handle at once? Are there skills that have to come first, before the straw is meaningful?

Just because you might be new to the formal classroom doesn’t mean you’ve never taught before. If you created your own master-job-experience-spreadsheet, you might find elements of teaching in much of what you’ve already done. Draw from this — it is valuable experience!

And with that, away we go, Towards Better Teaching! Later this week we’ll add our Wednesday question and next week we’ll add our Tuesday Tip. After that we’ll be operating according to our full publishing schedule:

Schedule

• Monday: The methods and practice of teaching (i.e. Pedagogy)
  • A post exploring the theory behind scholarly teaching. Hopefully something that will leave you thinking all week long.
• Tuesday: Teaching tips
  • A quick tip that you can use right away or hang on to for future use.
• Wednesday: Questions & Scenarios.
  • Got a question about teaching or learning? Facing a classroom dilemma? Not sure what to do? Not sure who can help? Send an email to gata@uwindsor where we have a team of experts standing by in the Centre for Teaching and Learning. Armed with ideas, resources, and all kinds of exciting teaching tools, these superheroes of teaching and learning are here to help you make your classroom a better teaching and learning environment for you and your students.
• Friday: Something light to get your weekend started.
  • Who couldn’t use another chance to smile? You might even LOL. Maybe a video, maybe a comic, hopefully entertaining.