"Watching Each Other Teach"
Tuesday, September 19, 11:45-1:15 in Buntrock 142
Elizabeth Leer, Education
Diana Postlethwaite, English and Boldt Chair in the Humanities
Anthony Roberts, Dance
All of us understand the communal and collaborative nature of successful scholarship. Teaching for most of us, in contrast, is a deeply private activity taking place behind closed classroom doors. Unlike scholarship, it is shared with colleagues primarily at those points when evaluation for promotion and tenure take place.
What would it be like to open the classroom door: to watch each other teach, and to talk about it afterwards, under different circumstances? Three St. Olaf faculty members had an opportunity last June to learn some structured ways we might begin to create communities of teachers. They participated in a five-day Teaching Partners Workshop sponsored by the Associated Colleges of the Midwest. Join us for lunch and conversation as they share their workshop experiences.
Elizabeth, Diana, and Anthony will model for us a structured exercise called "Microteaching," a workshop process by which faculty from diverse disciplines learn from feedback on their own teaching, and from the group conversations about teaching and learning that follow.
This Conversation will also provide an opportunity for faculty across the college interested in peer conversations about teaching to connect and consider possible models for future work together, be they Microteaching Workshops, Pedagogical Partners, or Teaching Circles (workshop attendees will talk about what each of these could be).
