Take-aways from the TLC’s 2022 Teach @ CUNY Seminar

I recently co-facilitated an online summer teaching seminar for CUNY graduate students, most of whom will be teaching for the first time in the fall. What came out of the many conversations we had with the seminar participants was a desire to feel comfortable grading, assessing, and analyzing student work. While responding to participant concerns, I began thinking of a general set of questions for instructors to consider when thinking about grading and evaluation strategies. Here’s what I came up with:

For Grading:

• What are three (3) outcomes you want to see represented in the assignment that you are evaluating? Are these outcomes narrow or broad? (Keep in mind that it is possible that fewer students will meet narrower outcomes.)

• What is the most important idea or theme for students to understand / achieve in this assignment? How is this idea / theme being explained to students? How will you measure their retention of this theme / idea?

• Do you feel comfortable having an open dialogue with your students about your evaluation style and grading philosophy? Why or why not?

For Evaluation and Analysis:

• How are you evaluating the three outcomes you want to see (see above section) in the assignment? How much weight are you giving each outcome? Are there any secondary outcomes / approaches you are looking for? How will those be weighted?

• How are you measuring student comprehension of said outcomes?

• Will you consider scaffolding your three outcomes (for example, starting off with one outcome for assignment #1, adding a second in assignment #2, and then adding the final outcome in assignment #3) to increase clarity and confidence among students?

For Stress Management:

• Are you journaling about what went well during the semester and what was not successful?

• Do you have trustworthy peers, friends, or family members you can talk to about your teaching practice / work day in general?

• What space do you make for “failure” (could be read as refusal) or fatigue in your classroom? How do you acknowledge this in class without penalizing students?

• Do you have a ritual/s you perform regularly to address the anxiety, fatigue, and stress you will inevitably face during the semester? If not, what might you be able to practice regularly to alleviate stress?

Bonus Questions:

• Are there any figures, scholarly or otherwise, that you model your teaching style after? What is it about their style that is compelling to you? Can you describe how a specific teaching practice of theirs makes you feel?

• Are there any written, visual, or aural works that inspire you as a pedagogue? What are they? What is it about the work that moves you?

• What three (3) principles that define your teaching approach?

Resources:

• Teach @ CUNY Handbook

• How Ritual Can Inspire Connection in the Classroom

• Restorative Evaluation: A Reparative Approach to Assessing Student Work

• My Teaching Notebook

Inspo:

• “A Talk to Teachers” by James Baldwin

• “The Race for Theory” by Barbara Christian

• Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks

Photo Credit: Samantha Borges. Free image via Unsplash.