A number of our professional associations (most often in the large disciplines) have separate organizations or subgroups within the association that are focused on teaching and learning. Does your field have such an organization? If so, I would encourage you to consider attending events hosted by the group. There is such energy generated when folks who care about teaching convene to explore issues and share ideas.
Posts Tagged ‘professional development’
A Tired Teacher
Posted Tuesday, June 15th, 2010 by Maryellen WeimerLast week I met a tired teacher—23 years of teaching at a two-year institution. That’s a lot of teaching; many times it was year round. He didn’t say he was tired. He said he was thinking about a career change. “Teaching’s become work, a job, no different than slicing meat at the deli counter.”
Lessons: Humility, Acceptance, and a Commitment to Improvement
Posted Tuesday, May 18th, 2010 by Maryellen WeimerWe can all improve. And we should feel at least some responsibility to do so. I also don’t think we reckon as we should with the fact that teaching skills don’t stay the same, at least not for very long. Either we are improving or the opposite is happening.
Do Take Care
Posted Friday, May 14th, 2010 by Maryellen WeimerThe Teaching Professor Conference is next week, and it’s a sold-out event. More than 800 of us will gather in Cambridge outside Boston for this event. If this year’s conference is like previous ones, it will be a high-energy event with virtually nonstop talk about teaching and learning
Despite some exhaustion by the time it’s over, [...]
Faculty Learning Communities: Benefiting from Collective Wisdom
Posted Tuesday, May 19th, 2009 by Maryellen WeimerAn article in the January-February issue of the Journal of College Science Teaching reports on the experiences of a group of life sciences faculty who participated in a faculty learning community. “We wanted to bring together life sciences faculty members who would discuss and support each others’ teaching and learning goals, breaking down the communication barrier that characterizes most teaching activities in the sciences.” (p. 39)
Striking a Balance between Who You are and Realizing Your Teaching Potential
Posted Thursday, May 14th, 2009 by Maryellen WeimerHere’s what I’ve been trying to figure out this weekend—how teachers balance between accepting who they are at the same time they push to realize as much of their teaching potential as possible.
Taking Professional Development Seriously
Posted Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 by Maryellen WeimerI have been struggling all morning to rewrite a chapter in my new book that has organizational problems. I was hoping the reviewers wouldn’t notice, but they did. I’m okay with the ideas. I think they make sense and put the right kind of frame around the rest of the book, but they don’t hang together like a frame. The chapter seems more like a mobile of free hanging ideas that loosely associate and occasionally bang into each other.
Looking Forward to The Teaching Professor Conference
Posted Thursday, April 30th, 2009 by Maryellen WeimerI believe I did a blog along these lines about this time last year—about The Teacher Professor Conference (this year June 5-7 in Washington, D.C., info at www.teachingprofessor.com). We would love to have you join us. We work very hard to make it a great event, and so far I’ve been very proud of how these conferences have turned out. There’s a variety of sessions, all carefully selected, many of which participants tells us are over-the-top excellent. We bring some big names to the conference—people you can really learn from as well as vendors with resources on teaching and learning. It’s a short compact schedule and by most standards, it’s not an expensive conference.
