In tandem with your primary teaching responsibilities and support of students, you’ll need to do some things to assure you contribute to the overall excellence of the program and are prepared to meet the challenges of your position on a daily, weekly, and semester-long basis.

Contract Year and Workload

Instructors are expected to be available for work, which includes training, from the first day of the contract period (generally the third week of August) through the last day of the contract period (generally in early May). In-person activities will be limited to the week before the fall semester begins.

You must attend on time all scheduled program and section meetings. If you must miss a training or meeting, you must let the admin team know, preferably before the meeting occurs. Instructors who miss a staff meeting due to unusual or unavoidable circumstances must check in with a member of the admin team and will be assigned activities that reflect goals for ongoing education that mirror those of the meeting. The time commitment for these assignments will be no less than that of the missed meeting.

We expect that instructors comport themselves professionally at all times with students and fellow staff members in classes, meetings and in all communications. This involves reading all course-related communications, being responsive to queries from the admin team, and being available to meet with the course director to discuss any concerns and questions that come up during the semester.

Timely Submission of Course Materials

At the beginning of each semester, you’ll meet with a member of the English 100 admin team to discuss your teaching plans. As a follow up, you must post a copy of your course syllabus and calendar, at least through Sequence 1, to the E100 BOX folder before your first class session (the link will be emailed to you or accessible through the Pre-Semester Checklist). By mid-semester, please submit calendars for Sequences 2 and 3 as well.

Similarly, you must meet with program administrators for a review of your final grades prior to end-of-semester submission.

Training and Staff Meetings

All Staff

All-staff meetings are a required activity for your appointment, whether you’re a TA, Teaching Specialist, or Lecturer, and important for ongoing professional development. These meetings are scheduled at the beginning of the semester and near the end. Sometimes there is a mid-semester all-staff meeting as well. Occasionally meetings will be scheduled at other times. Under normal circumstances, you will receive at least a month’s notice that a meeting is scheduled.

At the beginning of each semester, the meeting overlaps with orientation, which is scheduled during the week before the beginning of classes. Be sure to think ahead and schedule your travel plans so you arrive on campus in time to attend.

New Instructors

All first-time English 100 instructors complete asynchronous Canvas training modules with required assignments that prepare them for four days of in-person orientation training before the beginning of the fall semester. These four days include the all staff meeting.

In addition, new instructors attend weekly staff meetings for the first eight weeks of the fall semester. These meetings are a requirement of graduate students’ TA appointments, and the meetings are required for all new E100 instructional staff. Participation is essential to instructors’ development as effective teachers of writing in the English 100 program. Graduate students can choose to enroll in English 790 in order to have this engagement with pedagogy recognized on their transcript. English 790 is a one-credit pro-seminar (practicum) running concurrently with the weekly staff meetings. Whether enrolled in 790 or not, instructors will complete the same work involving pedagogical reflection and resource sharing, such as pedagogy presentations, teaching reflections, job materials creation, etc. Ultimately, staff meetings are an opportunity to create community and collaborate with other E100 instructors.

Experienced Instructors

All E100 instructors beyond their first semester of teaching are asked to participate each semester in professional development sessions and other educational opportunities outside of the all staff meeting. The approach to professional development varies from semester to semester, in order to include both E100-specific and broader campus and field related work. You should plan to participate in 2-3 events per semester (6-10 hours), as these hours are built into the instructor workload. These hours may include professional development workshops, committee meetings and/or other pedagogy-related meetings, including professional development opportunities outside of the E100 program specifically related to pedagogy and/or the teaching of writing (i.e. through the CTRW, CTLM, the Discussion Project, other campus or disciplinary entities, etc.). However, we ask instructors to attend at least one E100 event in order to meet and collaborate with E100 colleagues. Specific information on professional development events will be available early in the semester. Instructors will be asked to report back on their professional development activity at the end of each semester.

Observations

New instructors will be observed twice during their first semester of teaching English 100, once by an assistant director and once by either the associate or faculty director. You must provide course materials in advance of the meeting, and afterward meet with whoever conducts that observation to debrief about their classroom performance. These observations are more formative than evaluative, with the goal of improving your class engagement and structure. For more information, see the Classroom Visits and Observations page.