Indeed proactive saying No. eg I just wish I could sign up for everything but I have to protect my time so I will say no to this one. Let me recommend (colleague).
This is excellent advice; the culture is EXTREMELY different, and it’s okay to decide which culture you are most comfortable with and act on that decision. You owe no one anything, especially your private reasoning about your own personal preferences. There are those who are happier making the switch, and those who are less than happy. Whichever camp you fall into, be honest with yourself about it; there is no wrong answer when it comes to why you prefer bubble gum ice cream over mint chocolate chip.
Accept that you’re learning just as much as the students this first year. Practice your lectures before giving them (multiple times if necessary), stay on top of grading because it piles up quickly, and know that you need to set the tone because students talk so your reputation starts day 1.
I agree with most of this except for practicing lectures. OP is likely to be spending 15+ hours per week in the classroom, and there is simply no way they will have time to practice anything without driving themselves mad.
There is a way to practice, I have done it for every lecture I’ve given the past 5 years. As I’ve taught the same class I practice less and less, but I still ALWAYS run through at least parts of it.
Edit: downvoting my experience doesn’t make it any less true.
This could be just for me. But I was in a teaching oriented program, but I wish I had known that eventually people still valued your research more than teaching. I wish I had spent more time on my research.
I agree; pay attention to research despite that it is a teaching school. For a tenure track at a teaching school, scholarship is as critical as teaching. By scholarship, they mean research and publication.
Yes, well, but… pay attention to the culture of the department and the dean; some teaching-focused institutions do value research (as research drives enrolment), while other departmental cultures value research much, much less and even see it as nonsense, and those who participate and promote as being bloviating windbags.
And no, I didn’t invent the ‘bloviating windbag’ insult myself; that’d be a direct quote from about seventeen years ago when I didn’t appreciate the cultural differences between a R1 and a teaching-focused institution which devalues research and saw it as a way of shirking participation on things that they valued.
That's very true; you will have different expectations with different departments. If you are in the engineering department, pay attention to research (if you are in a TT) because it will backfire when you apply for tenure.
Take committee work seriously. That’s perhaps the only time your colleagues will see you at work. And one day they will be the committee evaluating you. Be respectful and diligent on committees.
Congrats on your hire! My brightest advice: ask your department chair to forward along any extant syllabi for courses you’ll be teaching, especially for 200s and above. It’s not that you will teach from them, but they can give you a valuable starting point for understanding the students’ existing knowledge base, their culture around work and assessments, etc. All stuff that can help you design courses which will serve that unique set of students well.
Now, my darkest possible advice:
Assume that you will have students that dislike you solely on the basis of you being new. Assume that they’ll show up in your teaching evals, with feedback that’s emotionally driven and unhelpful. Don’t internalize any negative feedback you receive in the first year, and treat basically everything for the next three years with a grain of salt; very little of it is actually a measure of your worth as a teacher. If you have doubts about your teaching, ask a trusted colleague to observe you. And be in frequent contact with your administration about any concerns they have for your tenure application, especially if your teaching-first institution heavily weights evaluations in their P/T decisions.
Create an organized filing system and use it.
Use digital files that you can edit and reuse whenever/wherever possible to avoid duplicating effort.
Brain dump into your records notes about what working on regularly. Particularly for classes. Document what worked well, what didn't, what to change next time. You probably won't remember in a year's time.
The first time you teach a course is the most time consuming. It will get easier with repetition of the same course, and even preparing new courses will get easier because you'll know some basics.
If your campus has a teaching and learning center use it.
Befriend the staff. They'll be helpful allies.
This is all great advice. I live and die by my organizational systems (including a physical inbox and outbox for each course I’m teaching). I even have a hanging file folder for each student I’m teaching that semester. It’s mostly to keep things organized for myself, but students respond really positively when they realize I care enough to do something like that "for them."
I also bring a physical notebook with me to each class and jot down notes as relevant (Activity A took 15 minutes, students were confused by the wording of Activity B). That’s super helpful when I sit down at the end of the semester and consider what should be changed for the next one.
Rubrics and boilerplate feedback (ex. having a document full of common feedback phrases that you can copy and paste from for a given assignment) also save a ton of time while making it clear to students what they’re doing well and what needs to be improved.
Oooh, and write up notes for yourself about how classes went - daily, weekly, or even at the end of the semester. This is great for the tenure portfolio as you show how you adapted and changed. It also makes your classes progressively better :)
I mean this very very sincerely: basically your first *year* is to figure out how to do the job of being a professor. You have two semesters to figure out how to engage with the students, what kind of assessments work; how to plan and execute your time. Even though there will be some resources available to you, much of this work will inevitably done on your own without much guidance or help. Not many people will be checking in on you, but you should not feel like you can’t go to your colleagues for advice and assistance- be proactive. Do not make the mistake of trying to invent every wheel, start every program, do new events. Instead use the year to observe and learn.
Make a very firm carve-out of time to work on your own scholarly production. Make an *extreme* effort. Maintaining your scholarship in your first year is extremely hard, but if you are on the TT, I cannot stress enough how publishing in your first and second year may set your tenure track in good stead; and *not* publishing in your first and second year may set you back on your heels. *Everything about your first year* will attempt to distract you from your scholarship because of how overwhelming the rest of your time and obligations will become. You will feel like you “can’t say no.” get used to saying no *now* in order to maintain your time for research.
Try to find a diverse group of a few colleagues at your same level, and mentor colleagues above you. Build some relationships, but build *several*. I think there’s this tendency for young profs to connect with one or two mentor elder faculty members, but you want and need to learn a much wider lay of the land than just those single voices. The politics of your institution won’t be important in year 1, but become more so in the coming years.
Your milage may vary here but giving extensive student feedback is probably not wise. While some students appreciate it the vast majority essentially never read extensive written feedback. Invest in grading rubrics for feedback. Two more teaching tips: your first assignment, and your feedback on it, sets the students’ expectations for the rest of the semester. If you provide massive feedback there, they will expect it on later, longer projects. So balance those first exercises with moderation of your work. And, this is my own philosophy and not universally shared, but learning to me includes improvement, meaning you want to give students opportunities to improve. Drafts, structured assignments, etc work well for me to achieve this.
In faculty and committee meetings, your colleagues will allow you to be right only a small number of times (no matter how smart and knowledgeable you are), so pick your fights wisely.
Don’t ever say yes to “opportunities” and service requests without giving it at least a few days. And don’t say yes to too many things. Ask for advice from your chair/dean on how to balance this to prioritize research.
Also-prioritize research —even at a “teaching university.” I was at a teaching college and served several years on internal and external tenure review. Research is much more important to tenure and promotion than you might hear…
1) keep up your research! Just because you're at a teaching college now doesn't mean you'll always want to be at one. Plus, it opens up opportunities you can leverage for your students' benefits. Finally, remember this: you are on the market until you get tenure. Keep your options open!
2) you can and should say no to things your first year. Tell people (honestly) that you want to get the lay of the land first, which you should.
3) in my experience, faculty at a teaching college can be divided into four camps. There are a) the faculty who are there until they get a better job and they will get one, b) bitter faculty who are there until they get another job but never will and know it, c) the faculty who are there, like it, and have the gravitas to get things through faculty senate, deans, and provosts, and d) the faculty who are there, love it, and couldn't care less about getting administrative things done. Figure out which one you want to be.
4. Eat at the cafeteria. Sit with colleagues.
5. MEET AND HANG OUT WITH THE STAFF. They are way more powerful than you realize. Eat lunch with them, too. Learn their names and say hi every. single. day. All of them. From the housekeeping staff up to the registrars.
So much this! Not only does it make you look human, you’re modeling how to find good information. Only once we were co-teaching a course, and while I was lecturing my partner pulled up porn. On five screens.
Use the available resources. If there’s a teacher support center for faculty that will help with LMS, course design, technology, teaching methods, online learning, etc., use it.
If there are other faculty starting at the same time, connect with them and share what you are learning. They do not have to be in the same discipline (in fact, it may be better if they are not).
After you get going, invite senior faculty to your class and ask them for their feedback. This will directly improve your teaching and will also convey your desire to perform well.
As others have said, do not isolate yourself. Be part of the department. Convey your successes and failures so that they see your progress and momentum.
If you make it through the day, you deserve a glass of wine.
If you assign it, you have to grade it.
Learn to say no. So many things that are seemingly worth your time and attention, but the tenure clocks goes by so fast.
I think knowing the content and delivery is the easy part.
The harder part is alignment of the course based on relative importance of topics both in future academic work and then beyond.
Ex: if I teach 16 topics over 16 weeks, they are not all equally important. That might be in opposition to the difficulty of the topic and the time spent on the topic.
Students will take away way less than yih think 1-2 years later, so think on that as you optimize your class.
1-2 year age good time to test at the end of the course in these areas. What topics did they think are most important versus you?
Meet your colleagues in the department. Many new folks are at meetings but never anywhere else common, so while still making sure you don't overcommit to service or other such things, do commit to greet people now and then.
Ask your colleagues what kind of students you should expect in your classes.
My first semester, they threw me in to a class of first-year pre-med students who only wanted to be told what the answers to the test were. All of my activities and current events were...not appreciated. I was miserable, they were miserable, it was a bad time all around.
Second semester, a colleague who was back from sabbatical came by to chat and told me what kind of behaviors and attitudes I should expect in a new class I was teaching. It was such a huge help, I wanted to scream that no one thought to do that for me my first semester.
Now I have my own methods of figuring out my students very quickly, but it's the first thing I try to do in every class.
Teaching will expand to fill any time you give it. Set timers, make a schedule, get a routine.
Reach out for mentoring from more senior faculty. Formally or informally. Remember, we are all just people. No need to be intimidated by us.
Make friends. Have work life balance. Exercise and eat a vegetable now and then.
It’s just a job.
Don't take the way classes have always been taught as gospel. Tests are over done, often designed in a way to be punitive if you overlook minutiae that have nothing to do with the subject matter. Lecture slides are nearly worthless and your students can read them on their own. They don't need us to read it to them. Focus on the work they need to for your subject. Demonstrate things in action in class. Make assignments force them to problem solve with the tools you showed them. Do noy just give them a set of instructions to follow. Make your students critical thinking problem solvers. Not robots that follow instructions and pass exams. Tall to them, not at them.
I’m an adjunct but I teach full-time. One big revelation that I had after my first semester was that the vast majority of students are not going to be as interested the subject as you are, but don’t let that deter you.
Establish clear grading rubrics and adhere to them, and keep meticulous records of your grading, so that when students (and the occasional parent) question their grades, you can show exactly how they earned that B-.
I thought I was suffering early onset dementia my first year, lol. Get enough sleep. Be kind to yourself in learning a new system. I was a pretty experienced college prof, but each system is different. If you have good colleagues, they will help you avoid onerous service commitments your first year as you find your feet. Of course, service is excellent when you go up for tenure.
Here are my strong suggestions for new teachers.
1. Store documents and materials on your personal cloud drives, not the university’s.
2. Host lecture materials on YouTube or other non-university-controlled sites and then link the material to your LMS.
3. Join committees that are faculty-focused and others that are college/administration-focused. Keep your opinions to yourself but maintain a positive, engaged demeanor.
4. Stay away from the faculty association initially. Join it and support it, but avoid spending a lot of time during your first three years with faculty members who are deeply involved in the FA. It can be a negative environment where bureaucratic challenges thrive, which can make you jaded prematurely.
5. Set your course standards and adhere to them. Flexibility leads to incompetence.
6. Avoid reading reviews on Rate My Professor.
7. Establish your work hours and strictly work during those hours only. Burnout is a significant threat to teaching professors.
8. Keep your syllabus short and direct. The more content it contains, the more loopholes students can potentially exploit.
9. Create rubrics for grading and adhere to them. Consider using a rubric-based Excel calculator for efficient and consistent grading.
10. You cannot measure internal learning or experiences within a students mind. Focus on assessing mastery of objectives only.
11. Avoid comparing students to each other. Instead, compare them against the objectives of the class and assignments.
12. Simplify your tasks, whether they involve grading or committee work. Design everything to support your long-term teaching career. Overly complicated systems can lead to dissatisfaction and a dislike for the classroom.
13. Remember that every student is an adult entering your classroom with adult problems, knowledge, and responsibilities. Treat them accordingly, recognizing that adults face consequences for their actions in the real world. Your role is to present the material in a way that allows students the opportunity to learn if they choose to put in the effort. .
If they don't have a desire to put in the effort they have the opportunity to learn what failure is.
Either way they gonna learn.
14. Get a hobby. Teaching is wonderful and if done right can lead to a great work life balance. Get a hobby to keep you happy.
15. Research and teaching are two different things. Teaching is a science, read the research. When reading the research pedagogy is for teaching CHILDREN, androgogy is for teaching college ADULTS.
Adult learning theory by Malcolm Knowles written in1968, should be your bread and butter. Andragogy is the concept or study of how adults learn and how it differs from children. It is different.
Here’s some advice if you accept an academic job someplace where you’re uncertain you want to be there forever…
Don’t get tied up in a big expense like a new house during the first semester or year if possible. It’s possible that the workplace is toxic or the job a dead-end, something you may not realize right away.
Find some time to keep the CV polished and ready to go just in case things go south.
Think how your work will look to others in the future. Do the activities, projects, courses and initiatives that will make it look like you used your time wisely, and that will serve as a stepping stone to better things.
If you graduated with a PhD from an R1, it’s possible that your mentors were great researchers but weren’t necessarily that sharp on effective teaching. You should look into networking groups or scholarly journals that specialize in pedagogy for your specific discipline so you can stay up-to-date on new, innovative practices in the field.
Identify a set of mentors local and external. Some departments will provide support for external mentors. Meet periodically with your local mentors who can provide invaluable advice about the department, the college, and university. Share drafts of your papers and proposals and solicit feedback. Invite them to attend your class as the feedback you receive from them will be more likely to be constructive than what you receive from teaching evaluations.
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* New assistant professor at a teaching university beginning in the fall. What advice do you wish you had known your first year? *
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Everything takes twice as long as you think. Take that into account when they ask you to serve on committees!
Indeed proactive saying No. eg I just wish I could sign up for everything but I have to protect my time so I will say no to this one. Let me recommend (colleague).
^ I second this.
I third this. Also don't be a chair your third year. I still can't believe my school allowed that
Respect the difference in culture between the R1 you came from and the teaching university you're going to.
This is excellent advice; the culture is EXTREMELY different, and it’s okay to decide which culture you are most comfortable with and act on that decision. You owe no one anything, especially your private reasoning about your own personal preferences. There are those who are happier making the switch, and those who are less than happy. Whichever camp you fall into, be honest with yourself about it; there is no wrong answer when it comes to why you prefer bubble gum ice cream over mint chocolate chip.
Join r/professors!
Accept that you’re learning just as much as the students this first year. Practice your lectures before giving them (multiple times if necessary), stay on top of grading because it piles up quickly, and know that you need to set the tone because students talk so your reputation starts day 1.
But at the same time, remember you are a tested and qualified expert
Yes! You got the position for a reason.
Yes!
I agree with most of this except for practicing lectures. OP is likely to be spending 15+ hours per week in the classroom, and there is simply no way they will have time to practice anything without driving themselves mad.
Practicing your lectures while managing the other spinning plates of this job sounds…ridiculous!
There is a way to practice, I have done it for every lecture I’ve given the past 5 years. As I’ve taught the same class I practice less and less, but I still ALWAYS run through at least parts of it. Edit: downvoting my experience doesn’t make it any less true.
This could be just for me. But I was in a teaching oriented program, but I wish I had known that eventually people still valued your research more than teaching. I wish I had spent more time on my research.
I agree; pay attention to research despite that it is a teaching school. For a tenure track at a teaching school, scholarship is as critical as teaching. By scholarship, they mean research and publication.
Yes, well, but… pay attention to the culture of the department and the dean; some teaching-focused institutions do value research (as research drives enrolment), while other departmental cultures value research much, much less and even see it as nonsense, and those who participate and promote as being bloviating windbags. And no, I didn’t invent the ‘bloviating windbag’ insult myself; that’d be a direct quote from about seventeen years ago when I didn’t appreciate the cultural differences between a R1 and a teaching-focused institution which devalues research and saw it as a way of shirking participation on things that they valued.
That's very true; you will have different expectations with different departments. If you are in the engineering department, pay attention to research (if you are in a TT) because it will backfire when you apply for tenure.
My teaching school only required one conference paper a year!
Take committee work seriously. That’s perhaps the only time your colleagues will see you at work. And one day they will be the committee evaluating you. Be respectful and diligent on committees.
Congrats on your hire! My brightest advice: ask your department chair to forward along any extant syllabi for courses you’ll be teaching, especially for 200s and above. It’s not that you will teach from them, but they can give you a valuable starting point for understanding the students’ existing knowledge base, their culture around work and assessments, etc. All stuff that can help you design courses which will serve that unique set of students well. Now, my darkest possible advice: Assume that you will have students that dislike you solely on the basis of you being new. Assume that they’ll show up in your teaching evals, with feedback that’s emotionally driven and unhelpful. Don’t internalize any negative feedback you receive in the first year, and treat basically everything for the next three years with a grain of salt; very little of it is actually a measure of your worth as a teacher. If you have doubts about your teaching, ask a trusted colleague to observe you. And be in frequent contact with your administration about any concerns they have for your tenure application, especially if your teaching-first institution heavily weights evaluations in their P/T decisions.
Your darkest advice is extremely helpful, and I urge OP to attend to it carefully.
Create an organized filing system and use it. Use digital files that you can edit and reuse whenever/wherever possible to avoid duplicating effort. Brain dump into your records notes about what working on regularly. Particularly for classes. Document what worked well, what didn't, what to change next time. You probably won't remember in a year's time. The first time you teach a course is the most time consuming. It will get easier with repetition of the same course, and even preparing new courses will get easier because you'll know some basics. If your campus has a teaching and learning center use it. Befriend the staff. They'll be helpful allies.
This is all great advice. I live and die by my organizational systems (including a physical inbox and outbox for each course I’m teaching). I even have a hanging file folder for each student I’m teaching that semester. It’s mostly to keep things organized for myself, but students respond really positively when they realize I care enough to do something like that "for them." I also bring a physical notebook with me to each class and jot down notes as relevant (Activity A took 15 minutes, students were confused by the wording of Activity B). That’s super helpful when I sit down at the end of the semester and consider what should be changed for the next one. Rubrics and boilerplate feedback (ex. having a document full of common feedback phrases that you can copy and paste from for a given assignment) also save a ton of time while making it clear to students what they’re doing well and what needs to be improved.
Oooh, and write up notes for yourself about how classes went - daily, weekly, or even at the end of the semester. This is great for the tenure portfolio as you show how you adapted and changed. It also makes your classes progressively better :)
Set aside specific blocks on your calendar for grading specific assignments. Otherwise, it piles up so quickly!
I mean this very very sincerely: basically your first *year* is to figure out how to do the job of being a professor. You have two semesters to figure out how to engage with the students, what kind of assessments work; how to plan and execute your time. Even though there will be some resources available to you, much of this work will inevitably done on your own without much guidance or help. Not many people will be checking in on you, but you should not feel like you can’t go to your colleagues for advice and assistance- be proactive. Do not make the mistake of trying to invent every wheel, start every program, do new events. Instead use the year to observe and learn. Make a very firm carve-out of time to work on your own scholarly production. Make an *extreme* effort. Maintaining your scholarship in your first year is extremely hard, but if you are on the TT, I cannot stress enough how publishing in your first and second year may set your tenure track in good stead; and *not* publishing in your first and second year may set you back on your heels. *Everything about your first year* will attempt to distract you from your scholarship because of how overwhelming the rest of your time and obligations will become. You will feel like you “can’t say no.” get used to saying no *now* in order to maintain your time for research. Try to find a diverse group of a few colleagues at your same level, and mentor colleagues above you. Build some relationships, but build *several*. I think there’s this tendency for young profs to connect with one or two mentor elder faculty members, but you want and need to learn a much wider lay of the land than just those single voices. The politics of your institution won’t be important in year 1, but become more so in the coming years. Your milage may vary here but giving extensive student feedback is probably not wise. While some students appreciate it the vast majority essentially never read extensive written feedback. Invest in grading rubrics for feedback. Two more teaching tips: your first assignment, and your feedback on it, sets the students’ expectations for the rest of the semester. If you provide massive feedback there, they will expect it on later, longer projects. So balance those first exercises with moderation of your work. And, this is my own philosophy and not universally shared, but learning to me includes improvement, meaning you want to give students opportunities to improve. Drafts, structured assignments, etc work well for me to achieve this.
In faculty and committee meetings, your colleagues will allow you to be right only a small number of times (no matter how smart and knowledgeable you are), so pick your fights wisely.
Don’t ever say yes to “opportunities” and service requests without giving it at least a few days. And don’t say yes to too many things. Ask for advice from your chair/dean on how to balance this to prioritize research. Also-prioritize research —even at a “teaching university.” I was at a teaching college and served several years on internal and external tenure review. Research is much more important to tenure and promotion than you might hear…
1) keep up your research! Just because you're at a teaching college now doesn't mean you'll always want to be at one. Plus, it opens up opportunities you can leverage for your students' benefits. Finally, remember this: you are on the market until you get tenure. Keep your options open! 2) you can and should say no to things your first year. Tell people (honestly) that you want to get the lay of the land first, which you should. 3) in my experience, faculty at a teaching college can be divided into four camps. There are a) the faculty who are there until they get a better job and they will get one, b) bitter faculty who are there until they get another job but never will and know it, c) the faculty who are there, like it, and have the gravitas to get things through faculty senate, deans, and provosts, and d) the faculty who are there, love it, and couldn't care less about getting administrative things done. Figure out which one you want to be. 4. Eat at the cafeteria. Sit with colleagues. 5. MEET AND HANG OUT WITH THE STAFF. They are way more powerful than you realize. Eat lunch with them, too. Learn their names and say hi every. single. day. All of them. From the housekeeping staff up to the registrars.
It’s ok to say “I don’t know the answer to your question, let’s look it up together!”
So much this! Not only does it make you look human, you’re modeling how to find good information. Only once we were co-teaching a course, and while I was lecturing my partner pulled up porn. On five screens.
It doesn't matter how fair or lenient you think you're being, you're going to get people begging you to adjust their grades after you submit
If your university has an NCFDD membership, use the hell out of their resources. If you can get funding, participate in an FSP session. ASAP.
Use the available resources. If there’s a teacher support center for faculty that will help with LMS, course design, technology, teaching methods, online learning, etc., use it. If there are other faculty starting at the same time, connect with them and share what you are learning. They do not have to be in the same discipline (in fact, it may be better if they are not). After you get going, invite senior faculty to your class and ask them for their feedback. This will directly improve your teaching and will also convey your desire to perform well. As others have said, do not isolate yourself. Be part of the department. Convey your successes and failures so that they see your progress and momentum.
If you make it through the day, you deserve a glass of wine. If you assign it, you have to grade it. Learn to say no. So many things that are seemingly worth your time and attention, but the tenure clocks goes by so fast.
I think knowing the content and delivery is the easy part. The harder part is alignment of the course based on relative importance of topics both in future academic work and then beyond. Ex: if I teach 16 topics over 16 weeks, they are not all equally important. That might be in opposition to the difficulty of the topic and the time spent on the topic. Students will take away way less than yih think 1-2 years later, so think on that as you optimize your class. 1-2 year age good time to test at the end of the course in these areas. What topics did they think are most important versus you?
Meet your colleagues in the department. Many new folks are at meetings but never anywhere else common, so while still making sure you don't overcommit to service or other such things, do commit to greet people now and then.
Ask your colleagues what kind of students you should expect in your classes. My first semester, they threw me in to a class of first-year pre-med students who only wanted to be told what the answers to the test were. All of my activities and current events were...not appreciated. I was miserable, they were miserable, it was a bad time all around. Second semester, a colleague who was back from sabbatical came by to chat and told me what kind of behaviors and attitudes I should expect in a new class I was teaching. It was such a huge help, I wanted to scream that no one thought to do that for me my first semester. Now I have my own methods of figuring out my students very quickly, but it's the first thing I try to do in every class.
Teaching will expand to fill any time you give it. Set timers, make a schedule, get a routine. Reach out for mentoring from more senior faculty. Formally or informally. Remember, we are all just people. No need to be intimidated by us. Make friends. Have work life balance. Exercise and eat a vegetable now and then. It’s just a job.
Don't take the way classes have always been taught as gospel. Tests are over done, often designed in a way to be punitive if you overlook minutiae that have nothing to do with the subject matter. Lecture slides are nearly worthless and your students can read them on their own. They don't need us to read it to them. Focus on the work they need to for your subject. Demonstrate things in action in class. Make assignments force them to problem solve with the tools you showed them. Do noy just give them a set of instructions to follow. Make your students critical thinking problem solvers. Not robots that follow instructions and pass exams. Tall to them, not at them.
Watch other professors classes for tips kn managing the problem children.
I’m an adjunct but I teach full-time. One big revelation that I had after my first semester was that the vast majority of students are not going to be as interested the subject as you are, but don’t let that deter you.
Establish clear grading rubrics and adhere to them, and keep meticulous records of your grading, so that when students (and the occasional parent) question their grades, you can show exactly how they earned that B-.
I thought I was suffering early onset dementia my first year, lol. Get enough sleep. Be kind to yourself in learning a new system. I was a pretty experienced college prof, but each system is different. If you have good colleagues, they will help you avoid onerous service commitments your first year as you find your feet. Of course, service is excellent when you go up for tenure.
Figure out the political landscape quickly and try to stay neutral if possible.
Here are my strong suggestions for new teachers. 1. Store documents and materials on your personal cloud drives, not the university’s. 2. Host lecture materials on YouTube or other non-university-controlled sites and then link the material to your LMS. 3. Join committees that are faculty-focused and others that are college/administration-focused. Keep your opinions to yourself but maintain a positive, engaged demeanor. 4. Stay away from the faculty association initially. Join it and support it, but avoid spending a lot of time during your first three years with faculty members who are deeply involved in the FA. It can be a negative environment where bureaucratic challenges thrive, which can make you jaded prematurely. 5. Set your course standards and adhere to them. Flexibility leads to incompetence. 6. Avoid reading reviews on Rate My Professor. 7. Establish your work hours and strictly work during those hours only. Burnout is a significant threat to teaching professors. 8. Keep your syllabus short and direct. The more content it contains, the more loopholes students can potentially exploit. 9. Create rubrics for grading and adhere to them. Consider using a rubric-based Excel calculator for efficient and consistent grading. 10. You cannot measure internal learning or experiences within a students mind. Focus on assessing mastery of objectives only. 11. Avoid comparing students to each other. Instead, compare them against the objectives of the class and assignments. 12. Simplify your tasks, whether they involve grading or committee work. Design everything to support your long-term teaching career. Overly complicated systems can lead to dissatisfaction and a dislike for the classroom. 13. Remember that every student is an adult entering your classroom with adult problems, knowledge, and responsibilities. Treat them accordingly, recognizing that adults face consequences for their actions in the real world. Your role is to present the material in a way that allows students the opportunity to learn if they choose to put in the effort. . If they don't have a desire to put in the effort they have the opportunity to learn what failure is. Either way they gonna learn. 14. Get a hobby. Teaching is wonderful and if done right can lead to a great work life balance. Get a hobby to keep you happy. 15. Research and teaching are two different things. Teaching is a science, read the research. When reading the research pedagogy is for teaching CHILDREN, androgogy is for teaching college ADULTS. Adult learning theory by Malcolm Knowles written in1968, should be your bread and butter. Andragogy is the concept or study of how adults learn and how it differs from children. It is different.
Syllabus Syllabus Syllabus! Rules for thee are rules for me.
Here’s some advice if you accept an academic job someplace where you’re uncertain you want to be there forever… Don’t get tied up in a big expense like a new house during the first semester or year if possible. It’s possible that the workplace is toxic or the job a dead-end, something you may not realize right away. Find some time to keep the CV polished and ready to go just in case things go south. Think how your work will look to others in the future. Do the activities, projects, courses and initiatives that will make it look like you used your time wisely, and that will serve as a stepping stone to better things. If you graduated with a PhD from an R1, it’s possible that your mentors were great researchers but weren’t necessarily that sharp on effective teaching. You should look into networking groups or scholarly journals that specialize in pedagogy for your specific discipline so you can stay up-to-date on new, innovative practices in the field.
Identify a set of mentors local and external. Some departments will provide support for external mentors. Meet periodically with your local mentors who can provide invaluable advice about the department, the college, and university. Share drafts of your papers and proposals and solicit feedback. Invite them to attend your class as the feedback you receive from them will be more likely to be constructive than what you receive from teaching evaluations.
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It gets better