EALC Graduate Student Blog

Below is the text of a TA Training Grant Application I submitted to the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) on behalf of our department in the summer of 2010, when I had completed two years of service as our department’s liaison to the CTL. This application was originally approved by Professor Reichert and the then-chair of the department, Professor Sun. The funding we received as a result of the success of this grant went to the early efforts to organize and create the online archive which has now become this graduate student blog.

I post it here for institutional memory among us grad students, and to encourage present and future grad students in our department to keep involved in efforts to secure funding and resources to build our department’s graduate student-focused agenda — namely, things such as professional development and teaching training, new grad student orientation, grad student community building, and continued efforts to build and maintain our student-run online archive.

As for “point people” who have advocated for EALC grad students in the past, I would say Mariatte Denman of the CTL has been a strong supporter of our department’s efforts to better prepare our grad students for TA work and training to become teachers at the college-level.

Joanna

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2010 CTL TA Training Grant Application

Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures

Project Description

The Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures recently revamped its webpage. At that time, the department’s graduate students discussed our interest in creating an internet-based space connected to the department webpage which would be accessible only to graduate students, where we could archive information regarding our department’s policies, opportunities and resources for its teaching assistants.

We have been notified that in the coming summer months or perhaps the early fall of 2010, web space will be made available for our department’s graduate students to access securely in this manner. We will then have the opportunity to create an online archive related to the training and support of teaching assistants in our department, if we can commit enough of our time and work to the task. With that web space, we aim to set up a wiki platform where all graduate students can read, edit, and contribute to the creation of a dynamic source of content related to graduate student teaching. This online archive and forum will help those graduate students preparing to be teaching assistants as well as those currently serving as teaching assistants. It would also provide resources for students who have completed their teaching assistant duties, who are in the process of creating materials for job applications related to their teaching experiences at Stanford.

The creation of an online archive concerning graduate student teaching within our department would assist our graduate community in updating and centralizing its institutional record of teaching assistant work and the role of graduate student teaching in our department. Our department’s graduate students currently lack such a unified record of teaching-related materials, policies and resources, despite recent changes in our course offerings affecting teaching assistants. Furthermore, an online archive would allow for better communication among all graduate students regarding graduate student teaching in our department. Without a departmental orientation or institutionalized training in place for our teaching assistants (particularly with regard to teaching non-foreign language “content courses”), discussion of teaching assistants’ responsibilities, available teaching resources, and opportunities for evaluating graduate student teaching occurs on a small scale via individual conversations between faculty and graduate students who will be working together, or between the most recent TA of a course and the next TA assigned to that course. An online wiki space archiving teaching training materials and resources could open up such discussions to all graduate students, so as to prepare them earlier and more consistently from year to year. This online teaching archive could also provide an open space for discussion of future plans to improve our own teaching and our department’s training of teaching assistants, and to advocate for graduate student teachers within our department.

An initial planning meeting near the start of the 2010-2011 academic year will introduce this online archive/wiki project to both our new cohort and returning students. At this meeting, three students will be selected to contribute to the work of setting up the wiki (according to a structure approved by graduate student consensus), and then drafting, gathering, formatting and inputting materials to the online archive. One student will be selected to update, diversify and edit our paper teaching archive, a kind of handbook of materials to orient and prepare future teaching assistants. This task will involve the purchase of contemporary texts and/or journal volumes related to teaching East Asian humanities and Asian languages. Ideally, these purchases would reflect the consensus of the department’s graduate students, and may include texts previous teaching assistants have found helpful in their own teaching. The tasks of creating and maintaining the paper and online archives will continue throughout the school year, and into the future, as needed.

Graduate students will lead and implement this project largely on their own, but in creating and maintaining the online and paper archives they will work in consultation with EALC Department Administrator Connie Chin and Faculty Coordinator Jim Reichert as necessary. This project stands to provide teaching assistant training and teaching-related resources to all graduate student teachers in our department (approximately 25 students).

Proposed Budget

Catering for initial planning meeting, anticipating up to 30 participants: $400

Graduate student salaries for three (3) students to create and select materials to include in the online archive, prepare materials for input (scan documents, manipulate existing computer files to conform to web formats), input documents, and maintain archive; 20 hours each @ $20/hour: $1200

Graduate student salary for one (1) student to create and maintain a paper archive of teaching-related materials: 25 hours @ $20/hour: $500

Photocopying related to paper archive creation: $75

Purchases of texts and/or journal volumes related to teaching East Asian humanities and Asian languages for paper archive: $225

Total amount of funding requested: $2,400

Hi everyone,

I came across this article (or perhaps, ‘opinion piece’ is a more appropriate term?) online recently, and thought it was worth posting here, especially because it is by Karen Kelsky, a former scholar involved in the field of “Japanese Studies” as a professor of anthropology.

This article covers an entire graduate student career’s worth of professional academic advising, and presents its particular points of advice in a very authoritative style. I would caution that it is a sobering read, in that Kelsky prescribes a large amount of work, and takes a very… realistic view of the current job market for tenure-track positions in academia.

http://chronicle.com/article/Graduate-School-Is-a-Means-to/131316/

I don’t post it here to encourage us all to immediately set out according to its path, but rather as an aid to help any and all of us who may not have yet come across it, in staying aware of contemporary perspectives on the pursuit of graduate studies (– even if, after reading it, you decide not to take any of the advice Kelsky proffers).

Joanna

Hi, all — I just uploaded the minutes of yesterday’s faculty meeting, which I have sent you, to this blog as well. See the right-hand side and click on “faculty meeting minute” to retrieve the file. The URL for the *old* Knight building may be misleading, since it is for the *new” Knight Management Center. The possible new department building is located almost next to the Oval and in the north of the now almost unmanned School of Business South building. Best, H

Hi everyone,

Just a quick post to let all of you know how to change your passwords and post simple entries.

When you’re viewing the blog, on the top you should see a gray tab with the following:  Your Username/Add New/Comments, etc.  To change your password, click on your username, then “Edit my profile.”  At the bottom of the next screen you can change your password.  Don’t forget to save!

To make a quick blog post, click on “Add New” in the gray tab, then click on “Post.”  You’ll be taken to the “Add New Post” screen, where you can write your blog post.  Don’t forget to click on the appropriate Category on the right.  If you don’t see a category relevant to your post, you can add a new category.  Or, you can contact me and I’ll add one for you.

As always, let me know if you have any questions.  Happy Blogging!

“From the get-go, don’t try to accomplish 100% in the classroom.  Things will never work out that way, because there will always be something that you feel you could have done better.  For starters, if you can accomplish even 50% of what you intended to do, you can consider that a job well done.”

This was the encouraging advice given to me by my supervising instructor, Kubo Sensei, which started off my first quarter of teaching second-year Japanese.  It may sound strange, even counterproductive, to consider “50%” as enough, but this was Kubo Sensei’s way of telling me that there is no reason to be hard on myself for mistakes, when even experienced instructors continuously seek improvement.  This advice saved me countless times throughout the quarter – for example, during the second week of instruction when I failed to present all the assigned material in one of my four sections; or, on several occasions when I explained a concept in class, only to realize later that there was a much better way of explaining things.

Probably my most rewarding experience from this quarter was when I realized, in early December, that my students were looking to me as an “instructor,” not as an inexperienced “teaching assistant.”  I bring this up because I remember my own days as an undergraduate being extremely critical of my TAs – sometimes even refraining from asking them questions because I felt that they would not be able to provide real answers.  As this quarter progressed, I found that more and more of my students were genuinely seeking answers from me.  When I knew an answer, I tried to provide my best response; and when I was unsure of myself, I honestly admitted that I didn’t know.  The latter didn’t discourage my students from asking questions one bit, and I’ve come to believe that honesty is essential to establishing a trusting relationship with students.

I struggled to find some topics of discussion which would be helpful for future TAs reading this blog.  Below I have listed just a few of my concerns from the past quarter.

For past TAs reading this post, I would much appreciate any additional suggestions or comments.

On team-teaching

I have heard numerous opinions regarding team-teaching – both positive and negative.  In many departments other than EALC, TAs are given their own section to teach once a day, five times a week. This allows TAs to completely design their own section material, and to devote their time to a maximum of 8-10 students per quarter.

Japanese language TAs are assigned at least three (and at most four) sections to teach on a specific day (usually every Friday), and teach alongside one or two more instructors who are responsible for sections on the other days of the week.  A framework for teaching (syllabus, powerpoint slides) is provided, so that TAs spend less time trying to construct new course material, and more time adjusting to teaching lots of students, teaching different course content, and assimilating a real instructor’s teaching methods.  Since each TA day is spent teaching the same lesson material three or four times, there are just as many “chances” to improve one’s instruction. But probably most importantly, TAs must pick up from the main instructor’s teaching from Thursday, and then successfully transition students into their Monday sections.

Does team-teaching put TAs at a disadvantage? From what I have experienced so far, my answer is no.  Being in charge of three to four sections has exposed me to a wide range of proficiency levels, something which I could not have known from teaching only one section.  Contrary to popular belief, it IS possible to connect with students (even with a grand total of more than 35), and given encouragement a student or two from each of my sections has visited my office hours.  Having to teach alongside (in my case) two Japanese instructors has given me more encouragement to “measure up,” so that my Friday sections will smoothly transition into Monday’s, and so that my mistakes will not inconvenience my students or fellow instructors.  And speaking honestly, constructing daily course material is impossible when you are a second-year graduate student having to take two or three courses per term in addition to TAing.  If given the option to (a) be an independent TA, but struggle with producing new course content; or (b) be part of a team and learn the ropes of teaching from a mentor while using preexisting course content, I would opt for (b).

Responsibilities

To give future TAs an idea of the expected weekly workload – it really varies each quarter, depending on the number of instructors who are teaching and the course enrollment.  If there are two TAs assigned to one language course, grading responsibilities will obviously be halved.  Also, since many Japanese language students study abroad in Kyoto during spring quarter, course enrollment will be less and hence teaching responsibilities will be lighter later in the academic year.

This past quarter my weekly responsibilities were to:

• hold one weekly office hour (Tuesday afternoon)
• prepare teaching slides (Wednesday night)
• have a weekly meeting with Kubo Sensei (Thursday morning)
• teach four sections (all of Friday, 10am – 3pm)
• grade online homework (usually every other weekend on Coursework).

Since there were two other instructors teaching this quarter (Kubo, Nakamura), my grading responsibilities were very light.  However this may change sometime during the next two quarters.

Evaluation

When I received my course evaluations from this quarter, I was surprised to receive only two section’s worth of student evaluations (even though I had technically taught in four).  I asked Kubo Sensei about this, and was informed that the number of section evaluations a TA receives depends on the number of course instructors teaching in the given quarter.  If only two instructors (main and TA) are teaching, it is possible for the TA to receive evaluations for all sections.  But because second-year Japanese this fall quarter was taught by Kubo Sensei, Nakamura Sensei, and myself, sections assignments (and hence section evaluations) were split among three instructors.

An independent TA teaching one section five times a week will receive only one section’s work of student evaluations.  However, these evaluation results will reliably reflect the TA’s own teaching, because students will not compare the TA’s teaching to another instructor’s.  This is not the case in team-taught Japanese language, where students will inevitably compare the TA’s teaching with that of one or more instructors.  Hence, there is some added pressure on Japanese language TAs to show satisfactory performance in teaching. I leave it to the reader to take this as a disadvantage of team-teaching, or as impetus for working harder to improve language instruction.

Hello my fellow EALCers!

I’m posting this entry as an introduction to our department blog – a space that I hope will become a forum for us to share and discuss our grad school experiences so that future EALC graduate students will have a place to go for honest and frank information about life in our department.

The following is a list of topics relavant to life in our department that we should begin posting about:

• Degree Requirements (MA/PhD)
• The TA Experience
• Teaching Advice
• Lesson Plans
• Class Recommendations
• Writing Advice
• MA Thesis/Dissertation advice
• Job Interview Tips
• Job Training/Job Market
• Journal Publication
• Calls for Paper/Conference Submissions
• Grad Student/Faculty Meeting Minutes

This is by no means an exhaustive list.  We are all free to post anything relating to our grad school experience and I encourage you to post whatever you think is helpful!  When you post, however, please be sure to check off the appropriate Category that the post should be filed under.  This will help other students be able to quickly find information regarding a specific topic.  Also, don’t forget to add some Tags to the post; this is just another way to classify the posts by topic.  If you don’t see a Category or Tag relevant to the topic you’re posting about, just email me and I’ll make sure to add that Category or Tag.

Also, as you’re reading through blog posts from other EALC graduate students, don’t hesitate to comment to their posts to add your own opinion/viewpoint on what they’re sharing.  It will be helpful for other students to have insight into several different opinions about the same topic.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me with any other questions you may have about the site!

Happy Blogging, EALCers!  I look forward to reading all of your wonderful posts!
~Gabriel

I.    Introductions

II.  Appointment to EALC positions

Graduate representative…………………………… Ting Ting, Hisaaki

Admission representative……………………………….. Adrian, Kevin

East Asian Studies workshop…………………………. Chenshu, Jeff

CTL Liaison……………………………………………………….. Robin

Blogmaster…………………………………………………………. Gabe

Librarian……………………………………………………………. Brian

Social chairs…………………………………………… Luciana, Amber

East Asian Studies workshops

Jeff explained the general objectives of EALC workshops.

Chenshu described the three events planned for this Fall 2011 quarter.

1. Jason McGrath, “Contemporary Chinese Cinema and Realism”
2. Andrew Jones, Developmental Fairy Tales
3. Peter Flueckiger, Imagining Harmony: Poetry, Empathy, and Community in Mid-Tokugawa Confucianism and Nativism

Center for Teaching and Learning

Robin is the CTL Liaison for this quarter, and will periodically forward workshop announcements to us. CTL provides resources for current TAs, and organizes teaching statement workshops (usually are FREE, and OFTEN PROVIDE FOOD).

EALC graduate student blog

Gabe explained how the blog originally started from a grant acquired by Joanna Sturiano, which Aragorn and others used during Spring 2011 quarter toward establishing a graduate student blog.

Go to ealc.stanford.edu, click on “Graduate program”

On the right side of the webpage (below Kevin’s statement), is a link to the “Graduate student blog”

Gabe will send out a mass email later to all EALC students detailing blog webpage info.  Email Gabe to acquire a username and temporary password to login.  This is NOT to be shared with students outside of the department.

POSSIBLE BLOG POSTS: kenkyukai notes; meeting agendas; program requirements; TA work (responsibilities, mentoring experiences, teaching materials, advice); info about qualifying exams, reading lists; info on course offerings; housing info.  No official language, but consider that half of your readers do not read Chinese, and another half of them do not read Japanese.

COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS: teaching materials must be posted after receiving permissions; if it includes copyrighted images, please REMOVE.  (See fairuse.stanford.edu, but if in doubt, ASK GABE)

Explanation of responsibilities

Kevin explained the responsibilities attached to the remaining unassigned positions.

The librarian will work with Connie to organize the Department Library and establish a system of borrowing materials.

The social chairs will be in charge of the department credit card (some restrictions may apply); suggestions for activities should be forwarded to them.

III.   Revisions to online graduate student profiles

Owing to the fact that there is NO WEBMASTER, the existing EALC website cannot be modified to include profiles.  However, every student at Stanford is assigned their own homepage to which they can upload .html files.

Students who are interested may potentially use pre-existing templates to upload their own profiles.

(For more info, go to: https://itservices.stanford.edu/service/web )

IV.   Other announcements

Writing Center dissertation boot camp

Gabe explained what exactly the dissertation boot camp is, and called for students interested in attending.  Any students who will be working on an MA or Ph.D. thesis this year are welcome.  Required to put in a $100 deposit (which you will lose if you don’t attend the boot camp!).  Gabe will send out a mass email explaining further details.

Requirements template

Robin has put together a Japanese program “requirements template” which can assist students with gauging their degree progress.  Gabe will post this online on the blog.  It was suggested that having a Chinese program “requirements template” would be wonderful as well.