Teaching Assistant (TA) Workshops

Mark these important dates on your

2011-2012 calendar!

 All Brock University graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants are invited to participate in the following professional development. These sessions are open to teaching assistants, seminar leaders, markers and lab demonstrators. 

1. Teaching Assistant Instructional Skills Workshop (TA ISW) 3 Day Program

Wednesday February 22nd - Friday February 24th, 8:30 am - 5:00 pm daily

For more information or to register for this 3 day certificate program go to www.brocku.ca/ctlet/workshops/isw 

2.   TA Workshop Series

Saturday mornings 9 am — noon, Thistle 253 (e-classroom)

Teaching Assistant Winter 2012 Workshops 

January 14th

1.    TA Orientation: Roles and Responsibilities

Facilitated by Tarah Csaszar and Jill Grose, CTLET

In this session, learn the “need to knows” about TAing. Focus will be on how to get started, successful strategies in teaching, and university resources available to TAs.

2.    Your classroom, your students, your role and you:  Reflective Practice for TAs

Facilitated by Prof. Lorne Adams, Dept. of Kinesiology

Reflecting on what you are teaching is an important part of the learning process.  Reflection in action (while doing something) and reflection on action (after you have done it) is a skill worthy of development in all disciplines. Join us to learn how you can develop a reflective practice that will benefit you the teacher and your students the learners.

January 28th  

3.    Un/Civil Learning Community

Facilitated by Prof. Zopito Marini, Department of Child and Youth Studies

While classrooms can be great places to sharpen critical thinking abilities through the exchange of ideas, they can also become uncivil places when unreflective critical comments cause hurt in others. As a TA, you are on the front line of many potential conflicts and must strike a balance between encouraging students to voice their educated opinions while being mindful of how unreflective comments can have unintended consequences. This workshop will examine the thin line between uncivil and civil behaviour with a view to creating a civil learning community in your seminar or lab.

4.    RefWorks

Facilitated by Jennifer Thiessen, James A. Gibson Library

Learn how to help your students manage citations and improve bibliographies with this hands-on session.  RefWorks is a web-based bibliographic citation manager that allows you to save and organize citations of journal articles, books, web sites and other sources. Learn how this on-line tool can automatically generate a bibliography or reference list in commonly used styles like APA and MLA.

February 11th 

5.      Academic Integrity and the TA Experience

Facilitated by Troy Brooks, Academic Integrity Officer and Prof. Joe Norris, Department of Dramatic Arts

This performance based interactive workshop is designed to initiate discussion regarding student academic (dishonest) behaviour.  The performance presents issues of academic integrity from a variety of perspectives as a means to open dialogue on the role of the TA in supporting academic integrity on campus.

6.    Assessing Students’ Work: Developing Shared Expectations  

Facilitated by Prof. Nancy Francis, Dept. of Kinesiology

This workshop is designed to enable participants to assess students’ work effectively through a variety of strategies.  Considerations to maximize students’ learning will include: explicit assignments, developing grading rubrics, making the subjective objective, and tips for the grading process.  

March 3rd 

7.    Ethical Dilemmas in Teaching

Facilitated by Tarah Csaszar, CTLET

Many of the decisions we make as instructors require an ethical response to a human situation.  Join this session to discuss how we can or might respond when faced with some sticky classroom situations.

8.    Writing a Statement of Teaching Philosophy

Facilitated by Jill Grose, CTLET

Teaching dossiers or portfolios often begin with a statement of teaching philosophy that describes what the teacher believes and values about teaching and learning. In this session we will discuss the purpose of teaching philosophy statements and begin to draft an outline for a philosophy statement that can guide our teaching practice.

March 17th   

9.    Teaching and Learning Styles

Facilitated by Jill Grose, CTLET

Do you teach the way you learn?  This interactive session will explore learning and teaching styles and how they might impact our classroom practice. 

10.  Course Closures: Ending Courses with Class

Facilitated by Jill Grose, CTLET

It is just as important to spend time wrapping up your course as it is to introduce it.  Learn how you can plan the last class to review, reflect and celebrate teaching and learning!      

On-line registration for TA workshops is now open at www.brocku.ca/ctlet/workshops. 

Registration is required for all workshops. Space is limited.

April 11th 

11.    TA Reception: Conferral of TA Certificates & TA Awards

TA Reception

Wednesday April 11th, 2012

12:00 pm - 2:00 pm

Alphie's Trough

If you have attended a minimum of 8 TA workshops on teaching with the CTLET, we invite you to join us to celebrate your achievements. 

Register to attend at https://ctlet.brocku.ca/events/index.php?q=node/552

 International Teaching Assistant Winter 2012 Workshops 

Thursday January 19th, 2012  12:30 pm - 1:30 pm  and  Thursday February 2nd, 2012  1:00 - 2:00 pm

1. What’s in the brown bag?  (Beverages will be provided)

Typically, people who brought lunch from home would do so in a Brown Bag. Brown Bag lunches are informal gathering times as compared to more formal lunch or non-eating meetings. Brown bag gatherings are supposed to be casual.

 So – come to the “Brown Bags” (actual brown bag and lunch are optional) and let’s talk language. Bring those phrases, sayings, and acronyms that make no sense – let’s see who knows what they mean.  Bring sayings that you’ve tried, or some from home, and see how they fit. Bring your laptop and perhaps we’ll blog, tweet, or start a chat session? See ya later alligator!

 Saturday January 21st 2012   10:00 am - 12:00 pm

2. Thinking about Cultural Differences and Classroom Expectations

Is it ever OK to arrive late to class?  How about students who interrupt each other to get their participation marks? Determining classroom expectations is extremely helpful for teaching and learning. Our own personal and cultural experiences shape our expectations.  Understanding how our own and student expectations interact can enhance student engagement in the classroom. In this workshop we will first discuss how expectations can clash, and then focus on the kinds of instructional strategies that can support our teaching and student learning.

 Thursday February 16th 2012  5:30 - 7:30 pm

3. But I just said that.  Saying the same thing in different ways.

Rephrasing and reiterating course content turns out to be an indicator of student satisfaction in seminars, labs, and tutorials. The art of rephrasing information is a skill that takes discipline content knowledge and practice.  In this workshop we will practice rephrasing and repeating course content. We will discuss different issues to consider when doing this; for  example, being mindful of the timing and spacing of rephrasing and engaging students in this process. Bring some course content and we will see how many different ways we can say the same thing.

 Thursday March 15th 2012   5:30 - 7:30 pm

4. Disciplinary Differences and Instructional Strategies

Our individual, cultural, and disciplinary differences enrich and enliven the classroom and student learning. TA interaction in the classroom turns out to be an important quality for the students we teach. The degree to which TAs interact in the classroom can be due to individual, cultural, and disciplinary expectations. TA engagement with students can differ when we are marking group presentations, facilitating a sociology seminar or teaching statistics in a computer lab. The focus of this session is to think about how instructional strategies focus our teaching objectives in our seminars, labs, tutorials etc., which in turn can allow us to bring who we are to our teaching.

 Saturday March 31st  2012   10:00 am - 12:00 pm

5. Funds of Knowledge:  Motivation & Self-Determination (All TAs are welcome)

Sitting on the bus I listened to a group of successful students discuss whether or not it was worth it to complete the assignment which was 2.5% of their final grade. Do your students choose not to do assignments?  In this workshop we will talk about different sources of motivation and how our own cultural and educational experience shape our beliefs about students’  academic behaviour.  Insights from self-determination theory and using our own funds of knowledge (e.g., lived cultural experiences) can also guide our teaching behaviors to support student learning.

All ITA workshops will be held in TH 253. 

Register on-line at www.brocku.ca/ctlet/workshops