I really think we need to re-think how teaching/ pedagogy is taught to PhD students in graduate school. Many PhD programs have no (or very little) formal, effective teaching training, though teaching/mentoring are an integral part of academia. A thread: 1/n

Getting a bit personal here: I entered college as an English major, wanting to be a high school literature teacher. As such I was originally part of the secondary education certification program-- that was a competitive program I had to apply to get into in my 2nd yr. 2/n

To get into that program, one requirement was to accrue (at least) 50 hours of working/ volunteering in schools. This wasn't a big deal for me since I had always loved teaching and had been a tutor in high school. 3/n

I tutored math, worked in a special education classroom during my breaks, and volunteered in an afterschool rec program. Literally my job was to interact with middle school students and keep them entertained (games, basketball, etc.) after school 4/n

Once I got into the program, I took classes in curriculum and instruction-- how to write lesson plans, how to actually map out a week of material, how to communicate with students. I did a practicum where I student taught once a week for 4 hours. 5/n

All of these experiences were INVALUABLE for my time in grad school as a TA and now teaching my own seminar at UR. Thinking about things like lesson planning, course goals, assessment, and even how to interact with students (I had to get observed as a student teacher). 6/n

I think all of these things prepared me well for being an effective teacher/ mentor. Notice how NOTHING I mentioned was from anything I learned RE teaching during my PhD. I think grad programs actually have to start requiring classes in pedagogy that are actually effective. 7/n

Most "teacher training" in grad school is just box-checking: forcing students to create a syllabus as a milestone, most grad students TA every semester (executing a professor's course design) w/o gaining experience thinking about their own. This should change. 8/8