Edu-babble and Preparation for Teaching.

This week graduate students at Bowling Green State University are attending a program called "GradSTEP" (Graduate Student Enhancement Program). It is supposed to prepare us for grad school and, in the case of some including myself, to be teaching or research assistants. Today's sessions (at least, the ones attended by students from all departments) were entitled "Welcome to BGSU's Integrative Learning Community" and "Undergraduate Education in Action." Right off the bat, Eric, Steven (both fellow teaching assistants in the math department), and I figured that these would consist mostly of regurgitated edu-babble. For those unfamiliar with the term, this simply means vague and lofty words and phrases used to describe the college's "strategic planning" for the future of undergraduate education.

We were quite correct. The goals and implementation of strategies for the goals of the school still remain quite unclear after 2 hours of being stuffed down our throats. We did manage to garnish a few facts: apparently they expect us to do everything we can to make sure students don't fail (including referrals to various university agencies such as the Counseling Center) and that the school wishes to "integrate things learned outside the classroom to what is learned inside the classroom." Whatever that means. In one session we analysed two "scenarios" in which students were struggling with their studies. None of us three had any progressive solutions that these people were looking for; we were simply all for trying to contact the student about the issue but not pressing any further if the student proves illusive or averse to help. Eric did offer the suggestion of speaking to a student's advisor to see if the class is necessary for the degree, since the student obviously does not want to be there. I did agree with this idea.

During the second session part of our task was to break into groups of 3-5 and discuss how, as teaching assistants, we could enact the goals of the school in our lecture and lab times. Granted, we should have been a little more respectful to the speakers, but it was very tempting to quietly remark to one another on the more ridiculous points made before the discussion was assigned. we were therefore "proxied," where one of the leaders came and stood near us as we "discussed" our ideas for enacting the school's goals, which mostly amounted to "I will teach math." Therefore we were, of course, called on to share our ideas later on. I was considering speaking on our behalf against some of the silly hand-holding and vague strategies posited by various other groups, but Steven was first to stand and managed to BS his way through explaining how we could do as much as we could as math teaching assistants. I was impressed. We were all amused, also, at the boos that came when he first mentioned that we were a "cluster of math majors" and the dirty looks that ensued when he declared math to be "meta-knowledge" (which is, of course, true; it's very difficult to find a discipline that does not have some basis in mathematics). Apparently we're just heartless math teachers who don't care about enriching the learning experience of students; we want to give you the information and get you out of the way so we can go back to research and whatever else it is we do. My word...

After coming to a common consensus that "One major reason the undergraduate program as a whole here sucks is because it's run by naive, idealistic women and men with no spines" (my words), we went to a short demonstration in the math building (not terribly interesting but definitely preferrable to the aforementioned activities) and then got to leave. I got my office keys, finally, and checked it out. We'll have to get a refrigerator, but otherwise it's pretty nice. I'll be sharing it with Steven and another math TA named Keith. Now I'm on to preparing syllabi, first-day exercises, MyMathLab registration (an online program that will be used as homework), and the Blackboard (a tool in each student's personal web portal provided by the school) pages for my two sections of College Algebra I. It's actually a fun challenge, though time-consuming and somewhat exhausting.