The Graduate Students’ Corner Jenna Asbury(note to History 109 students, material from this post is quiz-able for the week of September 10-15) After completing Week 1, (a.k.a. “syllabus week” – which as a student, this was my favorite day because professors typically let students out early) I had my first content session with my students.…
The Power of Our Profession On the Anniversary of My Son’s Passing(please excuse the personal nature of this post, but it is the ‘teaching addendum’ to an essay I just had published on the death of my firstborn son and how it shaped my scholarship. This is one way – of many – Elijah’s saga…
Why TA’s Hate Cengage’s CourseMate but We’ll Use it Anyway Being a Teaching Assistant for Edward J. Blum’s HIST109 class is really great. He’s really giving us a lot of freedom to customize our sections how we like. This means we get to fill in the details of our syllabi, we get to structure our…
For the vast majority of us, this week or next week will include the first day of school (Ed’s already been there AND blogged about it). Already my Facebook feed and email inbox include adorable groupings of nieces, nephews and children of my friends in their first-day best, grinning (or weeping, as the case may…
History 109 (first half of the US history survey) has officially begun. Huzzah and huzzah. I’ve met with the TAs, introduced them to the class (they were foolish enough to tell me silly things about themselves at our barbecue, which I then told the students in lurid detail … so sorry “Mrs. Brian Boitano” ……
A couple of semesters ago, I reinvented my survey course syllabus. I had been churning out a predictable-looking, text-heavy syllabus every semester. You know the type: The redesign involved formatting into a magazine-like layout which makes an attractive PDF: …but I also rethought my survey from the inside out since just presenting the same-old course…
In honor of my summer anthem…
Many of use music from an era to open a lecture or for discussion, but one approach I have taken the past few years is to encourage students to try and think of songs they know that fit with main themes of a period. I’ve developed my own (and made videos with images from the…
Last week I talked about a nifty little assignment that builds basic skills of historical thinking and sourcing. Next week I’ll share more about syllabus design and organization, but this week I wanted to highlight another important tool in my history survey kit: the course website. Our campus uses Blackboard as its course management system…
Ah, August… Time to remember that we actually have to teach in this profession. Time to reflect on all those things we said we’d get done this summer, and are feverishly writing blog entries instead… Ah, August…. But we also get to write syllabi. My five favorite things about it: Choosing a font. Garamond again? …
