Post 47: Guest Post on Teaching from Garrett Richards!

Three weeks ago we had a lab meeting during which Garrett Richards was one of two guests, and we ran out of time to discuss his perspectives on transitioning into teaching, which I had been particularly interested in hearing about. Garrett is one of those wonderfully reflective people who produces excellent work all the time, because of his unending internal processes of introspection and thoughtfulness. Because of this, he's delightful to work with, and he follows up when he says he'll do something with/for you. He's currently in Saskatoon finishing writing his PhD and teaching sessionally.

Garrett generously emailed me after the meeting with these additional thoughts, which we didn't get to talk about during the lab meeting (it already went over time). So, from Garrett:

1) Obviously teaching is something to consider a little later in your graduate career. I don't know of many sessionals without a master's degree, and it seems to be a minimum requirement on any posting. Still, if you're interested in pursuing teaching, it's something to start thinking about even at the end of your master's, even if you won't teach for another few years. Some PhD programs, for instance, have a mandatory teaching component (e.g. after your classes and comprehensive exams you might spend one term teaching a course coordinated by your department) that might be attractive to you.

First apple tree blossoms I've found on campus! Love the splashes of pink through the white petals! 

2) Sessional teaching is super unreliable. In any given term, the courses you are able to teach (and want to teach) might not be available. At the University of Saskatchewan (UofS), one tricky thing about this is that ALL sessional opportunities get posted to the public, even if a department already suspects they will fill them with their regular sessional instructors. 

So you need to apply to a lot of them, but some are not even "real" postings. I didn't have that problem applying at UVic (not that I ended up teaching there), but it was a lot harder to find the postings to begin with. If the university where you end up doesn't have a convenient regular posting for all sessional positions like the UofS, email the department(s) you're interested in and ask how to be kept in the loop. Anyway, demand for completely new sessionals seems to be low, so don't plan on getting an appointment right away - apply for a few different terms and hopefully you'll stumble into a class that a new instructor has a chance at getting. Then you'll have some experience and connections, which might open up further opportunities.

3) Of course, if you manage to get a permanent appointment in some department (i.e. based on your research), the teaching doors may fly open, even if you don't have any teaching experience.

4) Teaching is a lot of work, and takes up a lot of mental space (especially if you're teaching in an area outside your research focus). Most graduate students will already be familiar with these challenges from TAing. Actually teaching a class is way more fun (i.e. you actually get to make decisions about what material to cover and what assignments to give) but quite a bit more work. I'm lucky to have a lot of public speaking experience, such that I don't have to write super-detailed notes for each lecture (I use my slides to guide me and just a few extra notes written on paper). 

And some latecomer cherry blossoms. The first started blooming in February, and now it's mid-April! Lovely!

I've heard a piece of advice that you shouldn't teach until you've drafted at least two chapters of your dissertation. Still, splitting your focus between teaching and writing is hard - I try to devote entire days to one or the other. I would expect to do 3-days-teaching and 2-days-writing each week for a big class, and the inverse for a small one (once you get into a rhythm). 2 new classes at once would probably take all your time, but I assume things get way easier when teaching a class a subsequent time.

5) Be proactive in asking questions to someone in the department. They may not plan on doing a lot of hand-holding, and you should feel free to do a lot independently, but there are some things you will need guidance with (just like when TAing). For my first appointment, I was a bit surprised at how little information I was given - I sent an email back with about 20 questions (e.g. Is there marking assistance? Where will my office space be? How much can I change from the existing syllabi? How do I access online parts of the course? Do I need to ask the bookstore to order textbooks for my students? et cetera). It's a bit tricky to balance guidance vs. independence - I overdid the independence a little bit in my first class and should have gotten someone to check over the mid-term I had developed before giving it to my class (i.e. it was too hard).

Thanks Garrett!! 

Post 43: Student Health 101, Tutorial teaching, Writing Group, and Research Progress!!

Yesterday I got the most delightful email! I regularly read the Student Health 101 magazine that comes out every month, and saw some time last semester that they regularly solicit short student videos about a number of different topics, and so I decided that at some point I would try to learn how to put together a short video and submit something for a topic that I cared about and thought I had some useful advice. So a few weeks ago I submitted a little video about what I do to control my texting! As an introvert I LOVE texting, but try not to be on my phone all the time, so what I've found really helps me is to turn off the sound on my cell, which means that I don't get sound notifications every time I get a text, and that I reach for my phone when I am taking a purposeful break. Ultimately, it means fewer distractions, and is useful for things where the stakes are really high, like not driving and texting at the same time, or getting distracted by texts, then.

So, after spending about 3 hours learning how to use the iMovie program, and first, getting the length right, getting less nervous, rehearsing my little script so that I could concisely say what I wanted, and about 13 recordings later.... I submitted a video that I thought was not too bad. Certainly, I was tired and exasperated enough then to feel like throwing in the towel, and I thought that the sense of accomplishment from just sending it would do just great. So off it went!

AND YESTERDAY I FOUND OUT IT GOT CHOSEN!! That was really delightful! Now, I hope that there's a useful bit of advice out there for someone, or a couple someones, and now I have broken into my career as a video-journalist.

Okay, maybe not. But now I know a tiny bit about making a really short and simple video, which I didn't before I tried that.

Mini-salal (Gaultheria shallon) inside a stump along a trail through East Sooke Park!

My writing group and I also met yesterday afternoon, and it was such a productive afternoon!! We Skyped in our colleague Liz who's moved back to California at the beginning of this year; she's working on edits of her full thesis draft to get back to her supervisors, and wanted to get the first few chapters of her thesis back to them by the end of this week. She'd already gone through and addressed a lot of the simpler edits, and was working on some of the higher level (read: more challenging) edits when we checked in with her. The dynamic was admittedly a little bit different not having her in the room, but it was so nice to hear about how she was doing, and I think it really helped to reinforce her motivation to keep pushing through those edits, so I think it worked out for all of us. (I did check in with the others in the group this afternoon, and it sounds like it's working for us all.)

We did Pomodoros almost the entire afternoon, and I got so much done!! I wrote over 1500 words of new material: sections that have been floating in my head for the last couple weeks as I've been adjusting my energy budget to TAing (yesterady the 3 hours of teaching in a row didn't completely wipe me out, unlike the first week of tutorials, where I felt like I had run a marathon!). Between the new material, and going back for more edits to solidify a draft of my third chapter, it feels so good to see it coming together!

My third chapter is my methods chapter, and covers everything from the data collection, interview analysis and journaling, scope and limitations, and challenges. This will be, I think, the shortest of my thesis chapters, and has definitely been the most fun to write so far: it's had me reminiscing about my research trips, my wonderful participants, and the experiences I had when gathering that data. For example, there was a big theme of kindness of strangers for making those research trips work: when in Edmonton, I stayed with friends of my supervisor, a lovely couple, once of whom teaches at the University of Alberta. They hosted me while I visited the researchers there. When I was in Prince George, I was trying to find some milk for cereal the next morning, and I met Merlin, who gave me a lift down the highway to the nearest grocery store because it was on his way, and saved me a bunch of time. We still keep in touch!

And also while in Prince George, I spent a day driving logging roads with a wonderful woman and grad student there, Benita! We were enjoying the landscape and looking at forest regeneration and what shape the forests were taking about 15 years after the mountain pine beetle first passed through, and one of the numerous main areas where the outbreak began. It was a fantastic day, where we almost ran out of gas, and had to stop by a lodge to gets 15$ worth of gas from a canister. We took photos of the aspen forests and the lodgepole pines, and picnicked on the side of the Nechako River at someone's former hunting cabin; we had met the owner when we were stopped along the forestry service road to take photos, and the father and son came driving by and offered it to us as a lunch spot! That was a truly magical day.

Those research trips were a blast!

Signposts along the way. Great romp through the park. :)

In tutorial today, my students and I were discussing citation styles (in particular APA), and going over how to properly put together a citation, why we'd want to do that, and then a much larger discussion around how to assess the authoritativeness of a source, and understand the context of a particular article.

These kinds of critical thinking skills are sooooo important, and what myself and the other TAs has seen from the assignments was that students weren't quite researching deeply enough into where the voices of their sources were coming from, which includes everything from the funding people receive, the credentials they have, the journal/newspaper/magazine they are published in, the impact factor of the journal, and otherwise the bigger picture of locating and situating their voice in the discussion of [insert theme here].

They are bright students, I know they are, and I hope they'll use the information to their advantage; they need to show me that they can use the above outlined skills for their next assignment, so I am hopeful they will.

We hiked up a little island that you can't access when the tide is high. Beautiful teal waters in the little cove to see. 

Post 38: New Year, New Semester, Setting Perspective

Happy 2015! Wishing everyone health, happiness, a small dash of good luck, and many good times with friends and family for the new year.

I got into Victoria with a bit of a bang last night; my flight was delayed by about an hour and a half due to mechanical issues with the plane, and to top it off, the baggage folks ran out of room at the back of the plane, so we had to take on some of the bags at the front of the plane! So in total, the travel time from home was once again, over 9 hours. It is, at the best of times, a challenge to get out of the Kootenays. This post is more personal than any of my previous ones, on account of it just having been New Years and Christmas.

My hometown, Kaslo, as it sits on the banks of Kootenay Lake, slightly hidden from view by the trees.

It's rainy in Victoria—quite a different scene from the white snowy world of the Kootenays that I've been immersed in over the past 2 weeks, visiting my family. The break was great: I did a little bit of work while I was home, but between walking Laika, my parents' dog, shovelling a bit of snow, bringing in firewood, and helping with my family's business, it felt really good to take a bit of time off. I should also admit I was forced to take a bit of a break: my sister's fiancee came back from a visit to his folks out east with a horrible cold, which he gave to my sister, which I seem to have picked up from her. So, bogged down with a stuffy nose, head cold and headaches, I wasn't doing much for a few days, but that was fine, too.

Laika, bounding through the snow, always in action. 

Back in Victoria, I'm staring at my calendar. I have a few days before I lead a 1.5 hour conference session at the TA Conference here at UVic. I also want to wrap up my edits to my third chapter, my methods chapter, in the next week or so. TAing will start in the next two weeks, so it's good timing to be thinking about how to start first tutorials again, and what my relationship with a new class and new batch of students might be like. There are a couple of other small things on the side of that: I have a few hours to make up from my second research project, and for that project, an abstract is due in about two weeks for a conference at the end of May. For the same project, I've also to go download and figure out how to use HyperResearch, a qualitative data analysis program similar to NVivo (look for a post on that coming soon!) It feels like a very different world from one at home where I was walking the dog every day, and finding someone to play cards (mostly Skat), or having tea with my whole family, where I'm listening to my grandparents reminisce about their drives around various parts of Germany or surrounding countries.

I'll admit I'm a bit stuck on my memories of home, so this post will have quite a few photos of my time there. Laika, my parents' dog, is fantastic company. I got out almost every day because she needs a walk, and she paid me back by staying up with me later than most people in my family (my parents are bakers, and rise very early). She was an almost constant companion. I really enjoyed my time with my sister and her fiancee, and my brother and his girlfriend and her son, my grandparents, and my parents. Everyone. I miss them a lot when I'm not home, and while sometimes it's easier to forget that I miss them, it's that much harder when I go back home. And of course, there are always the mountains and the landscape of the Kootenays. What a phenomenal corner of this province I was lucky enough to grow up in (and here chime the sentimental bells...).

On a mini-hike up a ridge about 5 km outside my hometown; looking across Kootenay Lake.

I'll say it's a bit difficult coming back while still getting over a cold. I spent the day in today, tidying around the small apartment I share with my partner, putting clothes and presents away, catching us up on some dishes, accepting vegetable soup from his mother, and doing a little bit of reading. It's been a quiet day, but I haven't yet felt up for more. Perhaps tomorrow will be a day for getting more work done, and for facing the rain. Here's a photo from earlier in December here, with Oak Bay Avenue light up by Christmas lights (below). I hope they stay up for a good bit longer, as Victoria usually faces a good stretch of grey this time of year, which is arguably the toughest to face.

Oak Bay Avenue, at night, with Christmas lights!

But, I am very fortunate to have had great company to pick me up starting at the airport, where my lovely partner, Mike, came out to greet me.

So here's to starting off 2015 right, and readying for a great conference presentation taking place in under a week!

Post 31: Final TA Conference Workshop

I'm writing an extra post for what was my final workshop to wrap up the TA Conference, because it was FANTASTIC!

I'll confess that when I wrote my previous post, I questioned whether I was going to make it to the last workshop. It was about surviving marking essays (in particular), and I hummed and hawed about: it was late Friday afternoon after an already trying (though fun) week, and I was tired. Did I want to sit through another 1.5 hour workshop?

Well, am I ever ebullient that I did!

Edward White, the TA consultant (TAC) for the Department of Sociology, was one of the funniest, most cynical people I have ever met. It was clear from his opening introduction, where he handed us a well-researched, and EPIC 17-page document (as he put it [sort of paraphrasing here, based on my bad memory]: "Yes, I do believe that more is more.") that covered everything from differentiating between objective and subjective marking, to best principles of marking (always mark to a rubric), to different ways to handle usual problems that come up with marking (the list we made on the board and subsequently discussed included such things as engaging with professors, plagiarism, justifying a grade, giving a failing grade, time management, CUPE and saying 'no' to work, and more).

Wacky photo I took looking up into the roof of a bus-stop near campus! :) 

An idea that Edward talked about was marking to 75% of the grade for accomplishing the requirements of the assignment (that's where it's handy to have the rubric); then the other 25% should be reserved for the students who go above and beyond the assignment requirement. If they want those A range marks, they need to strive for them; at university we ask more of them than anyone did in high school. Taking the time as well, to engage with both the professor and the students (meeting them, making announcements and explanations of this kind of idea in class ahead of the assignments), and essentially investing the time to build rapport so they understand you're interested in their education and developing their scholarship skills, was certainly something that Edward emphasized.

Another main point that came out of the workshop, too, was that as TAs, we aren't marking the student or person doing the work; we're marking their scholarship. By externalizing their work, it becomes easier to engage with them without making them adversarial or antagonistic. When discussing the work they produce, and the scholarship they put into their assignments, it becomes a much better way to have a constructive conversation and talk to them about ways to improve their work.

Overall, it was an excellent workshop, and I'm so so glad that I went!! If any of the ideas very briefly sketched out above interest you, find Edward through the LTC and contact him for a coffee and to follow-up on some of these ideas. This is one very knowledgeable chap!

If you get a chance to attend this workshop next year (or in the spring if it's offered then), DO IT. No hesitation.

Post 29: TACs, and our new one!

The first day of the TA Conference yesterday was fantastic, and I'll post a short review very soon. In light of the conference and all things themed TA, let's talk about TACs! What are they, what do they do?

A TAC is a Teaching Assistant Consultant. They are an immense resource for all the TAs and graduate students in a given department, and regularly offer workshops for graduate student and TA professional development during the year. They undergo a fair amount of training at the Learning and Teaching Centre, so they are able to expertly share their knowledge and help graduate students learn more about teaching and TAing, and generally, professional development in academia. Her first workshop will be next week on Monday, September 8th, from 2:30-4:00PM, and will be "Facilitating discussions and establishing positive tutorial dynamics." Location: In the Dry Lab.

In Environmental Studies last week, we all received an introductory email from our new TAC, Anita Girvan! Anita is an interdisciplinary PhD student who is also a TA in The Environmental Studies Department.

Our lovely TAC: Anita Girvan!

A couple of words from her welcoming message:
"My name is Anita Girvan and I have the privilege of being the (first ever!) T.A. Consultant in the School of Environmental Studies for the 2014-15 academic year. This is a position supporting in part through the Learning and Teaching Centre at UVic.

My role is to support TAs  in diverse ways including (from the job description):
'Developing discipline-specific seminars designed for TAs in department; facilitating their professional development; helping with one-on-one consultations; providing advice and referral to appropriate campus resources; liaising with faculty.'"

Many departments have their own TAC; some don't yet. Have a look at the list of current TACs for 2014-2015. If you see that your department doesn't yet have one, have a passion for sharing knowledge and experiences, and you are an experienced TA, consider starting a discussion with Cynthia Korpan, who director of the LTC to see if you might be a good fit for being your department's inaugural TAC!

Post 7: Technology in the Classroom

I remember being terrified of being the person at the front of a classroom full of students, red-faced, becoming increasingly flustered and panicked as I struggled to figure out exactly why the project in the room wasn't posting my presentation on the screen. Time was ticking, it was already 7 minutes after the class's start time, and I was going no where.

I used that fear as propellant to ensure that that didn't happen to me. Because I also remember distinctly that feeling of powerlessness when it comes to technology that I don't understand, I'm happy to help anyone who asks, which also recently included a sessional instructor who posted their help request on one of our mailing lists.

Technology is awesome, and when used to your advantage, it can be a very powerful tool! Knowing how to link up to projectors and audio can allow you to show Powerpoint, Prezzi, Incite and other presentations; you can include YouTube videos, songs, movies, show materials on websites and anything else on the internet... essentially, anything! Learning how to use it, and feeling empowered and comfortable to do so is one of the things I consider myself lucky to know. (It certainly came in handy for a recent presentation that I had to do in a small boardroom.)

So first, you need to know your equipment.
I use a MacBook Pro from 2011, and knew from previous observations that it needs a VGA adaptor in order to connect to the standard equipment on campus. Older macs have different adaptors, so make sure you get the right one. If you have a PC, the requirements are slightly different. Some come equipped with a port that can be hooked into right away; others may need the appropriate adaptors. Google can be your best friend in helping you to determine what your needs are.

One of our local, native, and endangered orchids:
a spotted coral root (Corallorhiza maculata)?

Next, go to the classroom ahead of time to check out the setup there. It's fairly similar in all the rooms, but you never want to be thrown off by the projector screen being at the back of the room near the light switches and needing to hunt for it, instead of it being up front (where it would be more useful)! Typically, the data cable and the audio cable are connected on the presentations stands at the front or sides of all classrooms. So you just need to make sure that you can connect to them on your side.
You'll also quickly realize that if you're on campus as UVic, you need a key to open the equipment drawer; in our department, Lori is the Keeper of the Keys.

Next locate the on/off buttons for the projects. And make sure to select the correct one between video and data. I made that mistake at the beginning of this semester, and panicked for a minute, but I knew that the Audio Visual Services on campus has immediate classroom help, so I gave them a quick call, explained what was going on, and learned about the difference between the two video and data buttons in the equipment desk. That number at UVic: 250-721-8292. Speaking of -- Audio Visual Services offers in person training to show you how to use the classroom equipment. Depending on the kind of learner you are, that might be much more effective than this short blog post.

If you are playing something with audio, don't forget to plug the audio cable into the microphone port of your laptop. Otherwise, the only sound will issue from your laptop.

So, after you have your key, you know your equipment, you have your presentation/movie/song lined up, you should be good to go. Classroom technology is not that difficult, and really, it's about knowing how to turn things on, connect things, and turn up the volume.

And of course -- making sure to turn off and lock up when you're done. No sense in wasting energy. Once you have under wraps the technology you need, you can teach more effectively, relax and think about the content that you want to present, and go back to having the fun that teaching really is.

Prelude to the Good Stuff

So I thought I'd start with a short introduction: an explanation, really, of why this blog. For one thing, this thought has been on my mind for a while: I am very lucky. Lucky to be in graduate school; lucky to have great funding (PICS 2 year master's fellowship, and SSHRC master's funding); so lucky to have a supportive supervisor, colleagues, a great workspace—the whole shebang; and a pretty awesome family to which I don't think I've communicated very well what I do at school here.

I hope also to use this blog as a way of keeping track of the many lessons and great advice tips I come across; already there has been a whole bunch of learning throughout this master's degree so far, and it's far from over. A few highlights:
- having not done an honour's thesis in undergrad, learning to widen my perspective on what a big research project looks like and how to design, undertake, and (hopefully soon) bring it home.
- that it gets a little bit lonelier to specialize: friends move away, start getting married, investing in long-term relationships, first-houses, and following their own dreams, wherever they take them
- and that I now, TA-ing my third class, really love to teach. This, after learning to cope with my fear of public speaking (somewhat) so that I can get into a creative space and thinking about teaching concepts and strategies like 'flipping the classroom' and being, in short, an effective educator.
- I really care about critical and clear reasoning, and improving my own skills in all such related areas, as I realize this will not only be useful for completing my master's and excelling in academia, but also for life in general.
- and I also really love the local and native plants, and the West Coast and Canada's most biodiverse province, so it's always a good time to share photos and give a taste of what really fills my world (expect photos of flowers and native flora strewn throughout the posts.)

I have also learned that there are an innumerable number of ways in which I have come to see the limits of my understanding. I think this is the doorway of breaking down the Dunning-Kroeger Effect, where through digging into my current project (more to come shortly), I have become the kid who climbed the generously-grassed hill (entered grad school), and has flopped onto my stomach to shimmy to the cliff-edge and see just how vast the ocean of knowledge is, and that by looking at my little square on that cliff-ledge, I have come to realize that I know so, so, so very little.

So, in part, this blog is for me, and in part, I hope this blog can become a useful tool for other grad students out there -  a small handshake to say that yes, you deserve to be where you are, and a head shake that no, you are not alone in your questioning, your insecurities, and the feeling (pressure) that you 'aren't getting enough done' (an idea that I feel I have really been struggling with recently). In part, I hope this may also become a sort of check-in point for my supervisor, as well, as I try to meet deadlines and finish up with this program. I also hope that this can be a touch-stone for my family, so that I can better share with them what I'm up to all the time.

So, for a quick summary of my research project (coincidentally, this is the summary of my research that I submitted to the SSHRC Storyteller's competition this afternoon):

Climate Change, The Mountain Pine Beetle, and Scientists: Understanding Rapid Ecological Change

For some, climate change means rising sea levels or a greater chance for the incidence of a 100-year flood. For British Columbia and its neighboring provinces, global warming, combined with historical forestry and fire suppression activities, has meant more climate suitable habitat, no more -40°C temperatures to kill over-wintering beetle larvae, resulting in an unprecedented mountain pine beetle outbreak over the past 15+ years.

                          Outside Vanderhoof, BC: 15 years post mountain pine beetle landscape. 

The mountain pine beetle is a tiny insect, about the size of a matchstick-head. Not a great flier, it relies on pheromones (chemicals) to communicate with other beetles, including when to swarm a healthy lodgepole pine (its preferred host). This tiny beetle is responsible for reddening mountainsides and valleys with millions of dead trees. It has now travelled higher up mountains, as far north in latitude as the Northwest Territories, and has marked jack pine tree-trunks with pitch tubes as far east as Saskatchewan. In other words, the mountain pine beetle is no longer simply a ‘BC problem.’ This insect has very much become the climate change poster-child of Canada.

My SSHRC research investigates how this incidence of rapid ecological change affects scientists’—our experts’— perceptions and understandings of these environmental shifts: what do they mean, and what can we learn from it? How does having an unprecedented event in both scale and geographic extent like the spread of the mountain pine beetle change their perspectives on ecological relationships, their ideas for the future, and the practice of science? What can the mountain pine beetle tell us about how research is done in Canada, and is there a ’best way’ to allocate resources made available by such a crisis? My research will feature their voices and ideas about our changing landscapes.  

Currently, I'm neck-deep in finishing transcribing my interviews that are the empirical basis of my research, and should be analyzing the transcripts I'm producing by mid-February.

                            Outside Vanderhoof: a forest regenerating, 15 years after the mountain pine beetle. 

I'm a Teaching Assistant for ES 341, which focuses on giving students a grounding in ecological restoration. I'm also an aspiring writer, and in my spare time volunteer for The Malahat Review, the Arbutus Review, and occasionally submit articles to The Martlet, UVic's student-run publication.

I am a community-oriented gal, and also enjoy organizing events that I think enrich and contribute positively to society. Two events I'm helping organize are coming up in quick succession: CONFORWest 2014 and a Clothing Swap.

Needless to say, I really do like to keep busy, and feel like I'm contributing to positive change in my communities as they vary by scale locally, municipally, provincially, nationally, and internationally. I am very fortunate in my position that I can contribute to all the environmental, social justice, and political causes I care about. In this way, this blog will be a skip through all the adventures that grad school and life really is: including writing stories, communicating science, undertaking research, learning, and offering lessons learned from my experiences and research. Join me as I bumble my way through this rocket ride.

It's the end of January (and coincidentally a good friend's birthday—Happy Birthday C!). Tip 1 that seems impossible to avoid to continually bump into: start early. If there's a deadline you know about, plan your time well. Unlike MattyB, we can't step back in time, so we'd better make the best of the current few minutes!

Copyright 2014 Heike Lettrari.