I came across a blog entry today that addressed biology teaching, and a particular section of it seems to go along nicely with what we've been talking about here recently:
First, I'll be forthright in one thing: teaching was not my initial goal, nor was there anything in my training to encourage teaching. Especially if you get into a program with biomedical funding, there's active dissuasion from pursuing teaching: I was a TA for 3 quarters in my first year of graduate school, and then got put on training grants for the next few years and didn't set foot in the classroom again. Then there were the post-docs: no committee work, no teaching, pure research. Teaching is simply not part of the equation. Not my dream. Not even on the radar.
So what happened?
I got the same shock almost every biologist gets. You finish your post-doctoral training, you get an academic job, and they expect you to teach classes as part of your job. You've had no training, your advisors have all been discouraging you from wasting time away from the lab bench, and shazam! Teaching classes is a requirement of employment! Here's the deep end of the pool, splash, learn to paddle right now!
from the blog Pharyngula - complete post found here. The rest of the post is very interesting, particularly to me since I will be in this exact same situation one day (I hope. I mean, not that I hope to be totally unprepared, I hope they change some things by then, but I hope I'll be starting my career in biology. That part. Yea.).
Just more evidence that our country's educational system is not quite up to snuff.
3 comments:
This makes sense when you think about some of the classes you've taken where all the faculty really wants to do is talk about their research. And it helps to understand why faculty suddenly treats you (and talks to you) like you are their collegues not their students. Obviously because that's all they know.
Don't get me wrong! I LOVE that college students get treated like peers not subjects.
And I don't think the teaching thing is that hard of a mindset to achieve. Just talk about what you know ... and stop to answer questions. Okay the lesson planning is harder but the mindset is simpler. :) Then again maybe I'm a freak for finding the idea wonderful.
I don't think the mindset of teaching is that hard to achieve either - as for myself, the more time goes on, th more I feel like I would enjoy teaching. I enjoy teaching people new things on the science forums, I find myself wanting to tell kids all about the cool things I've learned about baboons, etc. Lately I've even been thinking about entering some kind of biology tutoring program.
But, I do think there are some skills involved in teaching that it would be good to learn before you get tossed to the front of a giant lecture hall. Things like lesson planning and dealing with problem students and designing tests etc. That's what scares me the most.
Most of my programs talk about TA bootcamp that happens the week (or weekend) before classes start. Still scary, but at least something. There's also supposedly a "peer system" of TAs who you can ask questions of and mooch lesson plans off of. ... Ithink I've read this more than once so it's got to exist at other schools too. :)
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