teaching Archives - Notes from the Apotheke

May 11, 2023April 26, 2023

3 Strategies for Equitable and Inclusive Teaching

Want to know a secret? Although I’ve been asked to give talks and lead workshops on topics related to teaching, I haven’t taught a course since Spring 2020!

All the pedagogy-related public-facing work that I’ve done over the last two and a half years has been based largely on four things.

First, I’ve reflected a lot on my own teaching (and learning) experiences. You can find some of those reflections in posts I’ve rounded up here.

Second, I’ve heard a lot from my peers about the courses they’re teaching. Sometimes, I’ve even offered advice based on my own experiences teaching those same courses.

Third, since I’m almost always on Twitter, I get a lot of inspiration from discussions of teaching on social media.

And, finally, I (try to) read a lot. Some books I’ve shelved over the years include Creating Significant Learning Experiences: An Integrated Approach to Designing College Courses by L.D. Fink and Start Here, Start Now by L. Kleinrock.

All this reflecting and researching over the years, however, has (finally!) led to this moment. In the fall I will be back in the classroom as I begin my tenure-track position. This means that I can now practice what I preach – and have been preaching for years.

In this week’s post, I’m highlighting some of the ways that I am planning to make my courses equitable and inclusive of all students. Clearly, I haven’t had a chance to test these approaches yet, so you can take them with a grain of salt. But I think that they reflect my overarching teaching philosophy well.

Laptop screen displaying a Word document and a powerpoint presentation

April 20, 2023March 30, 2023

Rubrics: The Ultimate Tool for Efficient and Equitable Grading

A month ago, I participated in the Presenting the Past Colloquium organized by Peopling the Past. The colloquium was held in Vancouver, British Columbia from March 23-25, 2023. The day before the colloquium started, I was also asked to organize a workshop on some topic related to pedagogy for the Ancient Mediterranean and Near Eastern Studies (AMNE) department at the University of British Columbia. The topic I chose was rubrics.

Black hand holding pamphlet that reads "Presenting the Past: Responsible Engagement & Mediterranean History" in front of an urban landscape.

In all honesty, I’ve never been the instructor of record for a course before. Therefore, I rarely had any agency over the grading scheme used in those courses.

As a graduate student I was a teaching assistant for five courses and only two incorporated rubrics. In this week’s post, I want to reflect on my experience with rubrics; how rubrics fit into my overall teaching philosophy; and some of the major takeaways from the workshop I facilitated at UBC.

August 18, 2022August 18, 2022

Round-Up: Back to School

“Back to school” hits different when you’re a final year grad student…

Black woman with curly hair, dark glasses, and gold upside down U earrings wearing a black turtleneck and black cardigan. Looking at shelves full of books. Computer screen in the background.

Did you know that a common side-effect of being a PhD candidate is time blindness?

Okay, I don’t know that for sure, but I have been in this boat for a while. When you’re not teaching or taking classes, the days and weeks really start to blur together. Is it Monday? Thursday? Sunday?

The only way I keep track these days is by scheduling meetings, planning events, or being reminded that a new episode of a TV show I’m watching is on.

Usually, not knowing what day of the week it is isn’t that big of a problem. All I really need to know is whether it’s a weekday or the weekend, so I can decide whether I should be working or not.

Occasionally, I find it important to be aware of the beginning and end of the academic term. As a graduate student this helps me determine how frequently I should be in contact with my advisor and committee (more during the academic year, less in the summer). Right now, it’s also useful for deciding when to schedule my thesis defense (y i k e s).

As the person who’s running this blog, knowing when classes start is important for deciding when to get this post out.

After a nearly four-month break, I thought this was an easy way to get back into blogging.

If something feels super overwhelming, break it into small, easy steps. First step to reviving the blog? Make a round-up (or two, or three).

This month’s theme is back-to-school.

As it turns out, I’ve written a lot about pedagogy. So, I figured I’d put all those posts in one place, for folks who want to check them out before term starts.

January 14, 2022January 14, 2022

Syllabus Shake-Up Day Five

Congratulations! You’ve made it to the fifth and final day of the 2022 Syllabus Shake-Up Challenge.

If you missed the other days of the challenge, or if you want to start from the beginning again, here they are:

Day 1: Syllabus Audit

Day 2: Traditional vs Innovative Strategies for Syllabus Engagement

Day 3: Examples of Syllabus Engagement Strategies in Action

Day 4: Common Harmful Assumptions We Make About Students

Today’s installment of the challenge is all about reflecting on the process.

January 13, 2022January 12, 2022

Syllabus Shake-Up Day Four: Avoiding Assumptions about Students

It’s day four of the 2022 Syllabus Shake-Up Challenge! If you’re just joining in, don’t forget to check out days one, two, and three. In today’s installment, we’re talking about common harmful assumptions we make about students and how to combat them.

As with the previous days, there is a prompt for you to work through on your own at the end of the post. Feel free to share your thoughts with the community by commenting on this post, or on social media by tagging @ApothekeBlog or #SyllabusShakeUp!

January 12, 2022January 11, 2022

Syllabus Shake-Up Day Three

It’s day three of the 2022 Syllabus Shake-Up Challenge! If you’ve made it this far, you’re amazing.

In today’s post, I am sharing a few examples of syllabus engagement strategies in action. Some of these are things that I have tried before, while others are strategies that I would like to try out sometime in the future.

Just joining in? Here’s where you can find days one and two of the challenge.

January 11, 2022January 10, 2022

Syllabus Shake-Up Day Two

Welcome to day two of the 2022 Syllabus Shake-Up Challenge! In today’s post, I’m talking about traditional approaches to syllabus engagement and new strategies that an instructor can use that are more effective.

If you’re just joining in, you can check out day one of the challenge here.

A challenge for instructors to increase engagement with their syllabi

January 10, 2022January 10, 2022

2022 Syllabus Shake-Up Challenge

“All too often we have been trained as professors to assume students are not capable of acting responsibly, that if we don’t exert control over them, then there’s just going to be mayhem.” – bell hooks 1994: 152

Welcome to day one of the 2022 Syllabus Shake-Up Challenge! Last year, around this time I decided to do a short challenge geared towards highlighting the work and experiences of BIPOC in the field.

Since then, I haven’t had the time or energy to lead other challenges, but made it one of my resolutions for the blog to do at least two in 2022.

August 12, 2021August 11, 2021

Small (Anti-Racist) Teaching

Something that I’ve found interesting is thinking about how common or popular techniques in academia can be applied to anti-racist pedagogy. In particular, I did this a few months ago when I talked about doing anti-racism work the SMART way. More recently, I read James Lang’s book Small Teaching.

While I found the book generally helpful and well-written, I found myself asking how could small teaching contribute to anti-racist pedagogy?

Every instructor, at one point or another, is faced with deciding how to deal with difficult subject matter and moments in the classroom. Ideally, such decisions should be made before anything difficult comes up, but often this is not the case.

For some, dealing with difficult topics and moments – including racism – in the classroom can seem like a Herculean task. Being expected to know when and how to intervene in such situations is a lot of pressure, especially when you’re faced with them for the first time. Plus, it can be emotionally and mentally draining for both you and your students, depending on your positionality in relation to the topic.

So, it should come as no surprise that often, when we’re asked to make changes to the way we teach, we don’t follow through. We are turned off by the idea of some great upheaval in the way we’ve always done things because it seems like such an onerous, time- and energy-consuming task.

I can guarantee that this is one of the driving factors in many instructors’ hesitation to actively reflect and adapt in the face of recent calls for more anti-racist curricula.

August 5, 2021August 3, 2021

5 Things I Wish I’d Known My First Time Teaching

If there’s anything you know about me, it’s that I’m always thinking about teaching. It’s a wonder that this entire blog isn’t dedicated to the subject.

But since it’s August (!) and a new school year is suddenly right around the corner (!!) I figured now was the perfect time to share some thoughts about teaching.

Over the last year there have been tons of resources created and shared relating to pedagogy, including this recent workshop organized by the Women’s Classical Caucus. Many of these aimed to remedy the fact that pedagogical training is severely lacking in Classics, and provide support to instructors at all levels and stages in their teaching careers.

What all of these workshops and resources have taught me, at least, is just how much I was missing when I first started teaching. Here are just a few things I wish I’d known way back then.