Teaching The TFs To Teach

Stuart Chandler's job yesterday was to be the perfect teaching fellow.

Dressed in worn sneakers, pants and a multicolored, shortsleeve shirt with a mini-microphone attached just below the neck, Chandler surveyed his section of nearly 50, well above Faculty of Arts and Sciences guidelines.

Attendance was so high that Chandler ran out of handouts, and for his presentation he decided against dogmatism. These are my suggestions, he told the crowd in Sever Hall 102 between sips of Evian water, and you can "take 'em or leave 'em."

Chandler, head teaching fellow for Professor of Comparative Religion and Indian Studies Diana L. Eck's class on world religions, then did something TFs rarely ever do in section. He lectured for 45 minutes.

It was an unusual day for an unusual class. Harvard students don't start their courses until next Monday, and Chandler's audience was composed entirely of TFs.

"Small group discussion is the most difficult form of teaching because you have the least amount of control over what's going on," he said.

That's why, according to Chandler, creating a comfortable section atmosphere is so important. If one student is dominating the discussion, stop her and ask the rest of the class to talk about their classmates' comments, he said. If you're assigned a section with "15 male seniors and 3 female freshmen," go to the head tutor and get it changed. If you suspect a student hasn't done the reading, don't put him on the spot by asking a specific question about a specific text.

"If you have a room like this one [with rows of seats facing forward], change it," he said. Otherwise, students will look at the teacher instead of each other, and section will be "18 separate dialogues between student and teacher."

To avoid such rookie mistakes, about 450 of Harvard's 1,000 TFs will attend sessions like the one led by Chandler, whose hour-long section was designed for teaching fellows preparing to teach in the humanities.

Unlike most undergraduate sections, the two-day training sessions were catered, and nobody had to do any reading. The Bok Center for Teaching and Learning organized the event.

The training sessions were designed for both first-year and returning TFs, and they dealt with topics as different as organizing science labs and dealing with racism in the classroom.

There were also special new sessions for foreign TFs, created after many students complained last year that some teaching fellows didn't speak English very well.

One session for foreigners yesterday covered the "culture of the American classroom," said James D. Wilkinson '65, director of the Bok Center.

In all the sessions, questions came from every direction.

How should we dress for section, one TF asked Chandler.

"I wear what's makes me comfortable," he replied.

More Departments

Wilkinson said more departments than ever before sent TFs to these training sessions for the upcoming fall semester.

The increase came after an academic year when TF training emerged as a campus-wide issue. Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell, a major advocate of reform, argued both in public and inside University Hall for a more centralized approach to the teaching of teaching fellows.

When the Faculty Council passed a plan last spring, however, they left most of the details of TF training up to the departments. Many are creating or beefing up plans, and several department chairs said this week that they are making liberal use of resources provided by the Bok Center.

John Huehnergard, chair of Near Eastern Languages, said his department does not have an orientation program for TFs this year. But he added: "We are in the process of formulating procedures that make heavy use of the Bok Center."

In physics, said department chair Gary J. Feldman, "we have a new TF program that we call microteaching.

"They each take turns presenting a small teaching exercise which is videotaped," he said, "and observers from the Bok Center, course instructors and others TFs comment on and provide criticism for."

Specific Tips

What many TFs say they want most are special tips and short-cuts that can make class go more smoothly. That has made sections like Chandler's popular.

"I was looking for quick tips, things that are proven to work," said John A. Girash, a teaching fellow in physics.

About 20 TFs also stuck around for a 4 p.m. section led by Virginia MacKay-Smith, assistant dean of the College for co-education. The discussion, entitled "Is it Helping or is it Harassing?", quickly turned from general guidelines to the specifics of love and sex in the classroom.

What happens, one female TF wondered aloud, "if you find the love of your life in the section?"

"Don't get romantically involved with undergraduates," Mackay-Smith responded.

Then she added: "You don't want any vibes to turn into vibrations."

Very little was shaking during a session on "Gender Dynamics in the Classroom" led by Wilkinson and Lee Warren, the Bok Center's associate director.

On a TV screen, Wilkinson and Warren showed a video of a journalism class discussing gender in reporting. The class reviewed differences in the ways that males and females wrote, and the men in the section began putting down the females and disrupting the class. Wilkinson and Warren then talked about how to handle such a section.

The video session fell flat. It was "disappointing because it was unfocused," said Mark K. Burns, teaching fellow in literature.

"It was more of a critique of the video, rather than presenting new information," Burns said. "It didn't have the same specific pragmatic focus as other sessions."

In contrast, a roundtable discussion of "Getting Students to Do the Work" offered "lots of good ideas and suggestions about how to motivate the students," Burns said.

The best part about yesterday's training, teaching fellows said, was that they had to be students and teachers.

"The sessions were beneficial, because they moved down to the students level," Girash said, "and then back up to the teachers' level."CrimsonJohn C. MitchellTeaching fellows participate in a workshop on dealing with racism in sections. The Walmaley University Professor, Emeritus, C. ROLAND CHRISTENSEN led the discussion.

"If you have a room like this one [with rows of seats facing forward], change it," he said. Otherwise, students will look at the teacher instead of each other, and section will be "18 separate dialogues between student and teacher."

To avoid such rookie mistakes, about 450 of Harvard's 1,000 TFs will attend sessions like the one led by Chandler, whose hour-long section was designed for teaching fellows preparing to teach in the humanities.

Unlike most undergraduate sections, the two-day training sessions were catered, and nobody had to do any reading. The Bok Center for Teaching and Learning organized the event.

The training sessions were designed for both first-year and returning TFs, and they dealt with topics as different as organizing science labs and dealing with racism in the classroom.

There were also special new sessions for foreign TFs, created after many students complained last year that some teaching fellows didn't speak English very well.

One session for foreigners yesterday covered the "culture of the American classroom," said James D. Wilkinson '65, director of the Bok Center.

In all the sessions, questions came from every direction.

How should we dress for section, one TF asked Chandler.

"I wear what's makes me comfortable," he replied.

More Departments

Wilkinson said more departments than ever before sent TFs to these training sessions for the upcoming fall semester.

The increase came after an academic year when TF training emerged as a campus-wide issue. Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell, a major advocate of reform, argued both in public and inside University Hall for a more centralized approach to the teaching of teaching fellows.

When the Faculty Council passed a plan last spring, however, they left most of the details of TF training up to the departments. Many are creating or beefing up plans, and several department chairs said this week that they are making liberal use of resources provided by the Bok Center.

John Huehnergard, chair of Near Eastern Languages, said his department does not have an orientation program for TFs this year. But he added: "We are in the process of formulating procedures that make heavy use of the Bok Center."

In physics, said department chair Gary J. Feldman, "we have a new TF program that we call microteaching.

"They each take turns presenting a small teaching exercise which is videotaped," he said, "and observers from the Bok Center, course instructors and others TFs comment on and provide criticism for."

Specific Tips

What many TFs say they want most are special tips and short-cuts that can make class go more smoothly. That has made sections like Chandler's popular.

"I was looking for quick tips, things that are proven to work," said John A. Girash, a teaching fellow in physics.

About 20 TFs also stuck around for a 4 p.m. section led by Virginia MacKay-Smith, assistant dean of the College for co-education. The discussion, entitled "Is it Helping or is it Harassing?", quickly turned from general guidelines to the specifics of love and sex in the classroom.

What happens, one female TF wondered aloud, "if you find the love of your life in the section?"

"Don't get romantically involved with undergraduates," Mackay-Smith responded.

Then she added: "You don't want any vibes to turn into vibrations."

Very little was shaking during a session on "Gender Dynamics in the Classroom" led by Wilkinson and Lee Warren, the Bok Center's associate director.

On a TV screen, Wilkinson and Warren showed a video of a journalism class discussing gender in reporting. The class reviewed differences in the ways that males and females wrote, and the men in the section began putting down the females and disrupting the class. Wilkinson and Warren then talked about how to handle such a section.

The video session fell flat. It was "disappointing because it was unfocused," said Mark K. Burns, teaching fellow in literature.

"It was more of a critique of the video, rather than presenting new information," Burns said. "It didn't have the same specific pragmatic focus as other sessions."

In contrast, a roundtable discussion of "Getting Students to Do the Work" offered "lots of good ideas and suggestions about how to motivate the students," Burns said.

The best part about yesterday's training, teaching fellows said, was that they had to be students and teachers.

"The sessions were beneficial, because they moved down to the students level," Girash said, "and then back up to the teachers' level."CrimsonJohn C. MitchellTeaching fellows participate in a workshop on dealing with racism in sections. The Walmaley University Professor, Emeritus, C. ROLAND CHRISTENSEN led the discussion.