Teaching Visitation & Consultation

What we are
Our mission is to help graduate students become better teachers through the increased self-awareness that comes from having their teaching observed. The GTC is committed to providing its participants with the tools to assess their own teaching performance and raise their sensitivity to the interactive nature of classroom teaching. These tools will benefit participants not only while teaching at Yale, but also throughout their teaching careers.

Participation in GTC Teaching Visitation and Consultation can be a one-time experience, but we envision it as a process that continues throughout a teacher’s time at Yale. Through the GTC counseling service we hope to benefit:
* ourselves as teachers
* our students
* our teaching communities
* our institution
* our profession

What we help with
Whether it is to polish up your performance for a job-market video or evaluation, whether it is to gain confidence in front of your students, or whether it is to be more competent in your teaching career, we can give you some neutral peer feedback in a whole number of teaching situations. We won’t have all of the answers, but we might be able to frame some of the questions that will help you to improve your teaching.

How it works
Once you have contacted one of our GTC consultants, a consult will be set up that consists of three stages: the pre-observation briefing, a classroom visit and observation and a post-observation consultation.

In the briefing, you (the teacher) provide the consultant background information on the class and share any concerns you may have about classroom dynamics. This meeting focuses the classroom observation and is an invaluable first step in making you and the consultant at ease with one another.

During the observation, the consultant takes notes on what happens in the classroom. S/he focuses not on the material itself, but on how you present it and how the students respond both to you and one another. If you want, the class will be videotaped at no charge and the video will be handed to you straight after the class (so no copies will be stored and no one else will see the tape except for you).

Finally, in the consultation, you and the consultant meet again to review the videotape (if one has been made) and to discuss the class. Rather than having the consultant evaluate you, in this session you and the consultant will engage in an open discussion of style and technique.

Helpful questions in your teaching
To improve your teaching skills, we have listed some of the questions to be framed that may help you in your teaching:

Leading a discussion section or running a seminar
~ How do you choose to make your points?
~ What types of questions do you ask and to whom?

Running a lab
~ How do you spread your time between explanation and experiments?
~ How can your efficiency be improved?
~ How do different students react to different parts of the lab?

Instructing a language class
~ What are the times that your students don’t understand you?
~ Which students talk and which do not?
~ What techniques can be used to involve more students in different ways?

Giving your first lecture
~ What sorts of organizational information and actual content do you cover?
~ How do you organize the class period and how might this influence your students' first impression of the course?
~ How do you engage the students?

Contact
To set up an appointment for a consult or for more information, please contact GTC