Question: I got invited to a campus visit at a teaching-focused campus in the Cal State system. I am prepared for the visit and the various meetings, talks, and interviews — save for one major component: the “teaching talk.” In addition to a job talk (“formal presentation of my research”), the search committee has asked that I give a 30-minute teaching talk, followed by a Q&A, to discuss my “pedagogical philosophy” and describe a few courses I would teach at the undergrad and grad level. The audience will be a few faculty members from the department. There is no teaching demonstration as part of the interview.
Can you offer any advice on how to prepare a talk of this nature? It is difficult to imagine delivering a presentation on what is basically my teaching statement and proposed courses without boring people to death. Never mind the fact that these people are seasoned veterans of a 4-4 teaching load and I have just a few years of experience as a TA and a lecturer. I have asked numerous colleagues and advisers, and no one has ever heard of a “teaching talk.”
The teaching talk is a pretty obscure genre — since most campuses concerned about teaching will ask for a classroom demo instead — but it’s not completely unknown.
The teaching talk is a talk about teaching. There you go. Will it bore people to death? Possibly, but then so do a lot of job talks. Just remember, though, teaching is a very meaningful and profound activity when it’s done well, and certainly can inspire 30 minutes or so of compelling description and analysis.
If I were to suggest a template for a 30-minute teaching talk, it would go like this:
Start with your overall philosophy of teaching your discipline or disciplines. In other words: What do students get from courses in your discipline, and more particularly, from the courses you might teach?
Mention intro and survey courses as well as ones in your areas of specialization. Don’t neglect either. Intro and survey courses are the bread-and-butter of the department and are required to keep up enrollment and the number of majors, so the teaching of those courses needs to be dynamic and engaging. Meanwhile, the specialized courses need to add new substance and topical range. The faculty need to know that hiring you would fill a gap or bring a new perspective to the department.
After sketching your larger teaching profile and philosophy, discuss two or three courses you’ve taught that illustrate the main principles. Be specific. For each of the courses you mention, spell out an example of a teaching method, assignment, or assessment you used that was effective. If you’ve only taught one or two courses — or never taught at all — then you’ll have to do this in the future conditional mode: “When I teach A, I will focus on B and have students do C.” You can add a few words (very few) that illustrate your success in teaching: Perhaps your students presented papers at conferences, won awards for papers written in your course, or applied successfully for jobs, internships, or graduate-school admission.
Next you’ll want to indicate how you bring your research into your teaching. You want the department to see thatstudents will benefit from your growth as a scholar.
You might also at this point discuss how you bring your teaching into your research — in other words, how you integrate students into your scholarly work. That is especially important at elite SLACs where it is a major component of your pedagogical responsibilities. But it’s increasingly important even at large R1s, because connecting undergraduates with faculty research is now known to be one of the core elements of student retention.
Be sure to show how you connect classroom work to the wider world. If you have students create mini-ethnographies of the local town, study art at the local art museum, or get involved in an environmental preservation project, make sure to mention it. For any discussion of teaching to be compelling, it must be original. Using your talk to rehash well-worn practices like group discussion or research papers does not qualify as original.
Finally, it is essential to touch on diversity. That is critical on any campus for any job at this point in time, but especially on a Cal State-type campus, which may well be serving a “majority-minority” student population. You need to show how you engage with students of diverse backgrounds, which can include race and ethnicity, nationality, language fluency, economic class, sexual orientation, disability, academic preparation level, and veteran status. Here, too, be specific, and don’t rely on hackneyed statements of good intentions. Ideally, provide an example where the diversity of your classroom proved a strength, and enriched the pedagogical experience for all (including you).
Be sure to wrap up with a few words that point to the wider applicability of teaching and learning in your field for students as they move on in their future lives. And with that, you’ll be finished, and will have provided a summary of your teaching that is specific, targeted to the department’s needs, and, we assume, reasonably compelling to listen to.