2022 - 2023 GradDegree+ Pedagogy Track
The Emotions of Teaching and Learning, Now
Here we are, again. Starting another fall semester on the heels of a year shaped by an ongoing pandemic, political turmoil, racial violence, and climate disaster both globally and in our own backyards. Many of us find ourselves struggling to motivate our students, let alone to motivate ourselves, as the burnout and uncertainty of the past several years wears on us all. And though our experiences navigating these various and overlapping global, national, and local challenges have all inevitably looked quite different depending on our circumstances, our classroom spaces and dynamics have nonetheless been impacted in noticeable ways.
So how do we find our way forward, collectively, with our students? How do we adjust our pedagogies, respond to the moment, motivate our students and ourselves, rediscover and reanimate the relevance of what we teach—all while under our own particular sets of demands and constraints as graduate student instructors? How do we keep going? Why do we? How are we all feeling right now, and how are those feelings showing up in the classroom space? How can we harness the research around emotions to help ourselves and our students show up as our best selves in the classroom in this historical moment?
This year’s GradDegree+ Pedagogy track will consider the emotions of teaching and learning, now, and will engage carefully with questions such as:
- How do we think about the role of emotion in the college classroom, and what are the assumptions, biases, and prior experiences surrounding emotion that we bring to the pedagogical table?
- What does an attention to emotion in the classroom ask us to do differently, to rethink, to revamp?
- Why and how might we utilize emotions in the classroom? What opportunities and challenges do graduate student TAs in particular face in trying to do so?
- Why do pedagogies attuned to emotions seem especially urgent in this historical moment? How can affective pedagogical approaches help support anti-racist, anti-ablist, and environmental approaches to instruction?
This year’s fall discussion series will build upon and extend the argument of The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion, by Sarah Rose Cavanagh, that emotions matter in the college classroom. And, not only do they matter, but we can use what we know about them to support student learning.
In the spring, we will shift our focus from a discussion series to a collaborative public writing workshop series. We will meet and workshop ideas together to produce short flash essays, interviews, personal reflections, book reviews, assignment and/or course designs, or other genres of our choosing that take up the theme of the emotions of teaching and learning, now, with the aim of submitting them for publication in an upcoming special section of CELT’S in-house journal Greater Faculties.
The fall discussion series as well as the spring writing workshops will take place once a month via Zoom. You must be able to attend all virtual meetings (3 each semester) and submit a short piece of writing either for publication or to the program facilitators to qualify for the credential and receive credit for GS 695 if you are in the GCCTL program*. Once the requirements are met, participants will receive a professional development certificate from The Graduate School and the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT).
Fall Discussion Series
third Thursdays of the month, 3:30-4:30, Zoom
You, The Instructor Sept. 15
Knowledge Emotions Oct. 20
Persistence Nov. 17
*The GradDegree+ track supplements the Graduate Certificate in College Teaching and Learning (GCCTL). Students enrolled in the GCCTL can receive 1-hour course credit by signing up for GS 695 in the spring. You must be in the GCCTL program to receive credit. If you are seeking certification through The GradDegree+ Pedagogy Development Track, you will not receive course credit. However, the completion of the program will result in a professional development credential that demonstrates your knowledge, training, and experience in teaching first-year college students. You may reference the credential in your job application materials.
Follow the link below to complete a short application:
Application Deadline: Friday, September 2, 2022
Contact Dr. Ashley Sorrell (ashley.sorrell@uky.edu) and/or Dr. Morris Grubbs (Morris.Grubbs@uky.edu) with questions.