Fall Calendar
Common Instructor Questions
Tutorial
Program
Student Resources 
Orientation occurs every semester for English 100 instructors but is most involved for new instructors. (Note: If you teach in the Spring, you will be required to attend a half-day orientation session for returning instructors, so please plan your holiday accordingly.)
This year's Fall Orientation schedule is the following:
(New Staff) Monday, 8/27, 9:00 - 3:30 - 6191 H. C. White Hall
(New Staff) Tuesday 8/28, 9:00 - 12:00 - 6191 H. C. White Hall
(New Staff) Wednesday, 8/29, 9:00 - 2:30 - 6191 H. C. White Hall
(All Staff) Thursday, 8/30, 5:00-7:00pm - English 100 All-Staff Party - Location TBA
(All Staff) Friday, 8/31, 9:00 - 2:30 - 6191 H. C. White Hall
NOTE: This section will be edited soon to reflect some slight revisions in the program policy
TAs new to English 100 are visited in the classroom twice the first semester they teach the course: the first time, informally, by one of the program's graduate student Assistant Directors; the second time, more formally, by a faculty member assigned by the English Department Associate Chair in consultation with the Director of English 100 and the TA him- or herself.
These visits serve multiple purposes. The first visit has a strong emphasis on peer mentoring but also serves as a preliminary evaluation. A short written report is made after each observation and is placed in the TA teaching files. One of the Assistant Directors will meet with you one-on-one to talk about your teaching so far, then visit your class, and, finally, meet with you again to provide feedback. The visit is meant to open up your class to the view of an outsider and get that person's sense of how things are going. These visits are also useful to the English 100 program as a whole, giving us cross-sectional information about how the syllabus is working and how TAs and students are handling its demands. The visits also help, we hope, to create community in the program. Even though it is an intensely social activity, teaching can sometimes feel very solitary. These visits make your work more public and connect you concretely at least to one of the program administrators. We have even found that students appreciate classroom visits.
The second, faculty, visit is admittedly more formal. But our experience is that these visits tend to be more collegial, and the write-ups more descriptive, than TAs expect. It is true, however, that written observations of the visit are made, strengths and potential problems are addressed, and the report is filed in the department office (with copies going to you and the Director of English 100). But these reports are more than evaluations: they are an important part of your own professional development, giving you useful feedback on your classroom performance; they provide the English 100 program with general information about teaching in the course; they are used in nominations for departmental and university-wide teaching awards; and they are often excerpted in recommendation letters written when you go on the job market.
The first visit is usually made sometime between the 4th and 7th weeks of the semester. You'll have input as to when you would like to be visited, though please bear in mind that the Assistant Directors will need some flexibility in scheduling and coordinating this very large number of visits and meetings.
The second visit is usually made sometime between the 8th and 12th weeks of the semester. Assignment of visitors is made in the Associate Chair's office, with input from the Director and you. Your suggestions of possible visitors are welcome. Some of you may want a current or prospective dissertation or thesis director to visit your class so he/she can write about your teaching as well as your research in recommendation letters. Your visitor can be from any department on campus; and, within the English Department, he or she can be from any of our areas - literature, creative writing, English language and linguistics, or composition and rhetoric. Visits can also be made by Ron Harris and by members of the Writing Center staff (Brad Hughes, Melissa Tedrowe, Emily Hall, and Nancy Linh Karls). If you do not have a person in mind, we will assign someone for you, and we will try to do this thoughtfully.
Once the assignment is made, you will be notified. You and your visitor will then need to make arrangements for the visit. Your visitor may get in touch with you; more often than not, you will need to send an email and suggest possible dates for the visit. Reminders will be sent about this process as the semester progresses. In the meantime, if you have someone in mind to visit your class, please send the Director an email message with that person's name; or, better yet, send two or three names ranked by preference. We will go through the suggestions, contact the faculty members, and draw up the actual assignments.
Let one of the English 100 administrators know if you have any questions or comments about anything above.
For the first two months of the term, new instructors are required to attend weekly staff meetings, which meet concurrently with English 790, a 1-credit course. We encourage you to enroll for credit, though you can attend the meetings and do all the work without officially enrolling. These classes are lead by the administrative staff. English 790 picks up where orientation leaves off: our meetings address the day-to-day challenges that face writing instructors, (e.g., devising and using in-class activities and homework assignments, conferencing with students, and commenting, evaluating, and grading effectively and efficiently) and help you to teach the syllabus as it evolves.
The meeting time of English 790 for the Fall 2007 semester is TBA.
Returning instructors attend staff meetings once a month every semester they teach (i.e. three staff meetings per semester in addition to orientation). They must also complete a professional development option each semester.