Danforth Center, GSAS Hold Seminar for Teaching Fellows

President Bok, Dean Rosovsky and other Faculty members instructed teaching fellows in the art of the classroom last Friday at a seminar co- sponsored by the Danforth Center and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

"I am especially happy to be here to lend my support to the Danforth Center and teaching in general because I would like Harvard to be excellent in all of its many endeavors, and this is one area in which there is room for improvement," Rosovsky told about 60 teaching fellows gathered in the Science Center.

Organizers of the seminar--which featured workshops on teaching writing and a panel discussion entitled "The Worst Things That Can Happen in the Classroom and How to Deal With or Avoid Them"--said they planned the event to give teaching fellows an introduction to their jobs.

"Our feeling was that that is the one profession that doesn't have any kind of an introduction," Dean K. Whitla, director of the Danforth Center, said yesterday. "Most teaching fellows have been successful students and graduate students but have had little experience at the teaching end. We feel that it is important not just to know ideas, but to be able to present them," he added.

During a morning workshop on teaching writing to freshman, Richard C. Marius, director of the expository writing program, told prospective Expos teachers that the average Harvard student doesn't write very well; but he stressed that the problem is not rhetoric but grammar.

"They have trouble defining to themselves what they want to say, and trouble carrying it through to the very end," Marius said, estimating that half of the freshmen entering the University have trouble writing.

Marius added that further problems arise because Harvard students intimidate many teaching fellows.