I am still warming up to blogging, and to being a regular writer. Because we are moving back and forth among the camp, the Ripley house, and school, the moving and the crappy dialup at the camp get in the way of me having any schedule -- and I can see that that is what I am going to need. I can post on the fly, sure, but -- knowing me -- it will be better if every morning early or every night late I sit my fingers down and make my brain follow. [I also need to stop caring what anyone else is thinking while reading this, which is for me the weird aspect of blogging: a journal, yes, private thinking, no. I know from experience that if I do keep a regular journal that some useful and teasing work emerges.]
So I am trying to think now -- before Orientation starts and we warm each other up, initially, with writing prompts -- about how to think visibly about Orientation. (“Revisions” is the course in written, visual, and oral communication that all new GTIs will be teaching.) Since this is public, finally, to some degree, I'll start with our goals for the Orientation workshop:
- Learn a rhetorical process for analyzing and producing texts using written, visual, and oral communication — including a base analytic vocabulary for doing this work.
- Learn the generally shared characteristics of students at MTU, and learn strategies for teaching to the strengths of those students.
- Develop a support network of other new as well as more experienced GTIs in the department
- Meet faculty from within the department who are pedagogical resources in various areas of approach (ie. tech comm, modern languages, technology, rhetoric, etc.)
- See modeled the kind of learner-centered, active teaching we want to have happen in their classes.
- Experience a range of effective pedagogical activities (both sequential assignments and individual activities).
- Learn a range of effective strategies for responding to, assessing, and grading student work.
- Consider their own teaching styles and kinds of authority they wish to develop in the classroom
- Develop a syllabus for their first semester of teaching.
- Develop the major assignment sequences for the semester.
- Have the first week of classes planned.
- Try out a range of practices for reflecting on our own teaching.
- Learn how Revisions fits into the General Education program at MTU.
- Learn the pedagogical resources of the department (CCLI, WC, etc.) and where to go for help in using those resources
- Learn the practical resources of the department (payroll, copying, supplies, etc.) and where to go for help in using those resources
The goals of the Orientation workshop
Through their work in the Orientation workshop, GTIs will:
pedagogical
practical
institutional
And yesterday we worked back through the workshop schedule and saw that we had addressed all those goals, in at least preliminary ways. We are good, at least in theory and for now. I'll be posting on the reality of the implementation starting next Wednesday.
And…
If I keep this up, some day I too might be the Bitch or Clancy or Collin... Some year I might even figure out how to do a blogroll without utterly minxing the unsteady organization of this blog I am not yet proud to call my own.
2 comments:
i hear ya
i hear ya on the needing to not care what people are thinking when they are reading this...i have edited one of my entries three times, trying to make sure i come across a certain way. did somebody say "time suck?" or wait, was it "ethos?" maybe it's just getting used to an unfamiliar genre.
ps: i loved the bitch phd site--especially the "open letter to the woman at the kmart snack bar."
Re: i hear ya
YES! Time suck... I have been working on this blog since about 8pm last night (and stayed up until 4 and back at it at 9), but at least some of this has involved talking with Brian and Barclay about how we will use these blogs in our respective Orientations.
And, yes, unfamiliar genre... From what I can see by following other people in their blogs, it takes a while to become accustomed to the possibilities of this. But once familiarity -- and, crucially, habit -- sets in, many people just fly....
Fingers crossed.
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