Teaching statement: show don’t just tell

13 Jul, 2017

During the first week of my new Marie Curie adventure (see MSCA “CONSUMEHealth”) at the Dyson School of Cornell University I had the chance to attend a very interesting workshop on “Writing a Teaching Statement” held by Colleen McLinn

Director of the  Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CU-CIRTL). Here, there are some tips useful for postdoc researchers and professors who would like to apply for a new academic position which involves also giving lectures.

First, a teaching statement is part of an academic job application package and even if probably this document will be examined in the application process after your CV and cover letter. However, writing a Teaching Statement is a good opportunity to expand in some depth on experiences that you only slightly cited in a few words in the CV.

So, what do you want to include in this statement? Definitely, past courses or topic that you feel to be qualified to teach, how to structure these classes, and also whether you tutored students for their thesis. Finally, it is important to make clear what will be the assessment method to evaluate the student knowledge and feedback from the teaching. In short: show don’t just tell.

And what it would be better not to write about? Well, just take a look at the picture below.

Colleen McLinn, Cornell University

 

If you would like to find out more on this topic, please here are some resources:

http://chronicle.com/article/Writing-SamplesTeaching/125726

http://theprofessorisin.com

 

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