Beginning Teaching Career - What Do You Wish You Had Known?

[Morden]

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
And yes, Spork's paraphrase is accurate. We don't have the infrastructure for science research. We have, however, hired a number of social sciences TT people recently since it seems to be a growth area for the institution.
For the OP, I don't think it's helpful to think of CC as a step down or a stepping stone; it's a different type of job.

[Aster]

Generally, I do not encourage freshly graduated PhD's to apply for positions at purely teaching institutions unless they really know what they are getting themselves into.

I've never personally witnessed anyone continuing to perform academic research in any big way unless that individual was working at an institution or organization that both expected and supported/subsidized said research. Out of the dozens and dozens of professional academics that I know who work full time at purely teaching institutions, maybe 5% or less perform any research at all. And out of those rare 5%ers, only a small minority of them crank out enough research to keep them competitive for most R2's.

All that said, I *hear* very different things from fresh PhD's during interviews whenever they're applying for tenure track positions at purely teaching institutions. Nearly 100% of those fresh PhD's will state their keen interest and enthusiasm for doing research if hired at the purely teaching institution. They will talk about the nearby universities and collaborating with research faculty there. They will talk about local businesses and organizations and collaborating with research with those folks. They will talk about setting up a research program at the purely teaching institution.

And then almost none of them ever pick up any research when they get the job at the purely teaching institution. A few might dabble around for a year or two, and then quit. But with no teaching buy-outs, no research space, no research budget, no conferencing budget, no grants office, no graduate students, maybe not even any upper division students, and the institution itself placing zero expectations for you to ever crank out a single book or article, the incentive to perform research dwindles to almost nothing. And that's perfectly fine and normal at the purely teaching institution. They're not in that business. Sometimes they like to *pretend* that they're in that business, but you don't get what you don't pay for.

After observing this phenomenon with incoming new faculty for over a decade now at Big Urban College (a purely teaching institution), I am pretty confident with my hypothesis that if you *really* want to do research, you need to work at an institution that both expects and directly supports/subsidizes your research. This means R2's. R1's. Some of the SLAC's. Purely research institutions. NGO's with research missions. Those sort of places.

Now if you're *adjunct teaching* at a community college, that's something else. I know many adjunct teaching faculty that also actively perform research. But nearly all of those faculty also work at a research job somewhere else. For example, I know two statisticians, multiple conservationists, multiple botanists, a veterinarian, and several PhD graduate students that are adjunct teaching with us or at other teaching institutions. For them, teaching with us is just a way to make extra cash, gain teaching experience, or they just like teaching but their other jobs don't give them that option.

Other people here on the forums sometimes offer differing views on research options at purely teaching institutions. There may be regions of the U.S., categories of purely teaching institutions, or academic disciplines where a lively research program is possible or even probable. I just have not see that myself.

[spork]

To the above I will add the following:

Applicants that lack publications and a supposed research agenda are not competitive for jobs at many four-year teaching-intensive institutions. Search committees and administrators still try to live the fantasy of hiring potential research superstars. And tenure standards at these institutions have steadily ratcheted upward so that a faculty member without any publications gets cut loose. I have seen multiple cases of tenure committees at four-year institutions with 4-3 or 4-4 teaching loads using standards for scholarship that they themselves would not be able to meet. Meanwhile evidence of good teaching -- SoTL publications, for example -- is ignored. Logically the faculty at a university where teaching is supposedly the #1 priority should want to hire and retain good teachers, but reality is often different.

[Wahoo Redux]

Use multimedia when you can, even over Zoom or whatever.  The current traditional-college-aged generation is used to all the technological bells and whistles.

And what everyone has been saying.  Relax.  Have fun.  Don't try to be an authority figure unless it is absolutely warranted.  Don't be surprised if your students appear to be kids and act like kids, but remember that they are actually age-of-majority adults and treat them as such.

Also, don't be ashamed to do quick Internet searches on subject matter to make sure you understand it. 

Don't count on anything job-wise in this day and age.  Do everything for every eventuality you can, including looking for outside academia.

Good luck.

[marshwiggle]

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

Doh! Can I get half marks for getting the T and L right?

[polly_mer]

For the OP, I don't think it's helpful to think of CC as a step down or a stepping stone; it's a different type of job.

This cannot be emphasized enough. 

My current non-academic employer has many people who left academia because being a professor at a great R1 means being the project manager, not the person doing the day-to-day science. 

Again, professor is a different job than grad student or postdoc.  We have many people who teach one course somewhere because teaching is interesting as a side gig, but their main job is research here.

[Charlotte]

Thank you all for your input so far! Apologies I have not responded to each one yet but I'm reading through and taking notes. I appreciate everyone taking time to share their thoughts.

[Caracal]

And what everyone has been saying.  Relax.  Have fun.  Don't try to be an authority figure unless it is absolutely warranted.  Don't be surprised if your students appear to be kids and act like kids, but remember that they are actually age-of-majority adults and treat them as such.

Yes. One of the things that I struggled with in my first few years of teaching was getting flustered when I made a small mistake,  which often led to me getting defensive. I'm probably only a little better at the actual organization stuff, but the thing I do much better now is just roll with it. If you're teaching five classes, you will occasionally just drop the ball on something. If, right as you are starting class on Monday, a student asks you about an assignment due Friday you're usually better off just rolling with things. "Oh, you're right, we had a lot to get through Friday and didn't make it to that. Actually what we'll do is I'll move the due date to next Friday, and we'll talk about the assignment on Wednesday. I'll send a reminder email out about that and change Canvas. Ok, so this week..." Students mostly don't care how organized you are, they just want to know that you are in charge, you are looking out for their interests and that when something gets messed up, you aren't going to shift the burden onto them.

Speaking of organization. When you teach a lot of classes at one time, it really helps to have as much set up to operate without you, as possible. Small things really add up when you have to do them for a lot of classes and a lot of students. That means putting readings up on the CMS at the beginning, but also the reading quizzes, the assignments, etc, etc.

Think about the same thing with grading small things. Last semester I finally switched from paragraph reading responses to automatically graded multiple choice exams and realized I should have done it a long time ago. I think pedagogically the response paragraphs are probably better, and they were individually easy to grade. However, if something takes 30 seconds a student, twice a week, and you have 100+ students., that starts adding up really quickly and becomes a bad use of your teaching time.

[marshwiggle]

Students mostly don't care how organized you are, they just want to know that you are in charge, you are looking out for their interests and that when something gets messed up, you aren't going to shift the burden onto them.

This is true up to a point. In particular, the pro-active students will get annoyed if the rules change after they've already invested a bunch of effort in a task, even (especially?) if it makes the task easier, because it has wasted their time. Don't do anything that essentially penalizes people (or implies they were chumps for trying to be on top of things)  who took you at your word with the original instructions.

[mamselle]

Have some sort of bare minimum that you know you can meet for those days when it just gets too crazy.

I once ended up with five courses to teach (adjuncting) for a semester in which I'd been assigned only one, and had taken on extra work as a staff assistant at another school across town to (supposedly) make ends meet that term.

Someone had gotten seriously ill (bedridden with mono), two other courses ended up not having instructors at the last minute, and my first class overfilled, so I had two sections, one of majors and one of non-majors (all in art or architecture history, thankfully...) and those two sections had wide preparation gaps so they were really two different courses.

Crazy times....

My minimum for myself (back in the days when we didn't yet have digital images for everything) was that I'd meet every class with slides in the tray.

There was one day where all I could do was put paired slides from three different career points of ten different modern/NYC studio artists of the 1940s-60s in the tray and elicit classroom discussion on how their styles had changed...the most prep I could do was to be sure I'd listed the dates of all their pieces in order. I ran to class with the trays and my index card with the dates on it with a minute to spare.

It was actually one of the best classes that term, and several mentioned in the reviews that they enjoyed being allowed to make critical comments, etc., after the prep we'd had throughout the term up to that point.

But have a minimum standard for yourself that's practical and do-able, and stick to it.

That goes a bit towards making things more sane when they want to be crazy.

M.

[Sun_Worshiper]

I have been a TA and learned a great deal but feel very unprepared.  I am interested in hearing from this group. What do you wish you had known when you first began?

I wish I had known how to manage the classroom: Not letting some students dominate the conversation while others never contribute; not letting students go on and on about something irrelevant; mediating effectively when students get into debates that turn heated.  I've gotten better at all of these things, but it takes time.  One thing that has become useful for me is strategic cold-calling.  Another is to frame questions for the class very carefully, so that students can't just go in any direction.

How do you handle the inevitable moment when you are asked a question you are not prepared for and you don't want to lose credibility in the eyes of your students?

Better not to fake it.  Just say something like: "Great question!  I'll have to give it some thought to give you a suitable answer."  Then come back to it another time, after you've given it a little thought. 

Is this a situation where you just have to accept that you will make plenty of mistakes but eventually will be better prepared for anything that comes up or are there ways to avoid making the mistakes in the first place?

I made lots of mistakes when I first started, and I still do today.  Just do your best and I'm sure it will be fine. 

And remember, you are the most knowledgeable person in the room, by far, so have confidence!

[Sun_Worshiper]

A few other tips that come to mind:

Students have limited attention spans, so try to do something different every 15 minutes or so (e.g. break them into discussion groups or have them watch a video).

Be organized and keep a grade book.

Be polite and pleasant, but don't let students walk all over you.  You are an authority figure and sometimes you have to say no, especially if a student asks for a favor that would give them an advantage over the rest of the class.

Maintain professional distance.  As a student I always wondered why professors were so distant and aloof, but now I understand.  You aren't their friend or their parent, you are not responsible for holding their hands or being there for them emotionally.  You are the professor.

[mamselle]

Quote from: Charlotte on 07 August 2020, 07:54:05

I have been a TA and learned a great deal but feel very unprepared.  I am interested in hearing from this group. What do you wish you had known when you first began?


I wish I had known how to manage the classroom: Not letting some students dominate the conversation while others never contribute; not letting students go on and on about something irrelevant; mediating effectively when students get into debates that turn heated.  I've gotten better at all of these things, but it takes time.  One thing that has become useful for me is strategic cold-calling.  Another is to frame questions for the class very carefully, so that students can't just go in any direction.

Yes, there's a thing called "protective interruption" that is used most specifically in group therapy interactions, but a milder form of the skill is very helpful in teaching settings.

Have a very short time-frame in mind for the answer, be listening from the start for the most important/relevant word in the reply, positively reinforce that as soon as possible, and move on.

If folks flounder, be able to ask others for their input, saying, "Can anyone help nnn formulate an answer here?" or, "Yes, that's correct, others?" and keep it brisk.

M.

[Caracal]

Students mostly don't care how organized you are, they just want to know that you are in charge, you are looking out for their interests and that when something gets messed up, you aren't going to shift the burden onto them.

This is true up to a point. In particular, the pro-active students will get annoyed if the rules change after they've already invested a bunch of effort in a task, even (especially?) if it makes the task easier, because it has wasted their time. Don't do anything that essentially penalizes people (or implies they were chumps for trying to be on top of things)  who took you at your word with the original instructions.

Sure. That's true. A little like being late for class. Okay, once or twice in a semester, not so much if it is a constant thing. The broader point is that students mostly want to feel like you are in control of the class and are comfortable. Owning the inevitable small mistakes without making a big deal of them helps with that.

[the_geneticist]

Since you are at a CC (but still applicable anywhere) - know your student population. 
Are they mostly recent high school graduates or working adults?  Will you get dual-enrolled high school students?
Why are they taking your class?  Is this a foundational class that everyone has to take to get started or is it one of the last classes for a certificate/transfer?
What kind of attrition rate is normal for the course?  A 50% or higher DWF rate might be common or expected if it's a class with no pre-reqs.

Something to ask that trusted senior colleague:
How much work is reasonable to expect them to complete outside of class time?  Do most students have access to a computer at home or not?  Is there a computer lab on campus?