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General Description: Teaching Mentors provide additional support and training for new graduate student instructors.
Responsibilities 1. Individual and group meetings. In the first semester, you are responsible for scheduling one-hour meetings with your group, and 30-45 minute meetings with your individual instructors each week. In the second semester, you may reduce these to bi-monthly meetings. The structure of these meetings will vary depending upon the style of the Teaching Mentor and the group dynamic. The primary purpose of these meetings is to address the immediate problems and concerns of your instructors, providing them with support and a forum for exchanging knowledge and strategies for managing their class. You may also use these sessions to discuss, for example, handouts, class assignments, students, techniques, or theories of writing. You may wish to conduct some "workshop style" sessions, focusing on grammar or grading, or have your group read, grade, and discuss some student essays (their own or some you've collected). You may wish to read and explore short essays about writing pedagogy. 2. Bi-Monthly Meeting with the Director and Associate Director of Critical Writing to communicate the issues and concerns of new instructors as well as mentors face, and to insure that our instructors and mentors get the support and advice they need to be effective. 3. Classroom Observation: You will observe your instructors at least twice each semester, meeting with them afterward to discuss your observations. You will also insure that all of your instructors observe each other's classes (as well as your own, if you are teaching). Each observation should include a detailed transcript of the classroom session, as well as comments about what worked especially well and what might have been improved. 4. Office Hours: You should hold office hours (2-3) each week for instructor drop-in, as well as be available to meet your instructors by appointment if needed. Office hours and location should be submitted to the Director of Critical Writing no later than the first day of classes. 5. Letters of Recommendation: Instructors whom you mentor may ask you to write on their behalf; the Director of Critical Writing will also solicit comments from you to include in the teaching letter that is part of a job candidate's dossier. Qualifications 1. Recent Penn Ph.Ds or ABDs with dissertations well underway. 2. Must have two or more years of demonstrated excellence as an instructor of writing, preferably at Penn. Stipend Teaching Mentors receive a $3000 stipend for the academic year. How to Apply Applicants must be endorsed by their home department. To apply, submit a letter of interest; your current CV; a writing sample (3-5 page excerpt from a recent seminar paper, essay, report or other academic writing); a letter of endorsement from your graduate chair; and two letters (which can be emails) from referees to: The Critical Writing Program Center for Programs in Contemporary Writing University of Pennsylvania 3808 Walnut Street Philadelphia, PA 19104-6121 Applications must be received by February 15, 2008. |