Table of Contents

AY 300 Fall 09: Ninth Day Plan

  • Check for questions

Usual Weekly Recap Stuff (20 mins)

  • Ask any or all of the following:
    • How did section go?
    • What did you do?
    • What didn't work?
    • What would you have changed?
    • Any cool/interesting/sad stories?
  • Get people who haven't talked about their section yet in 300 to speak briefly on the above questions.
  • Keep track of who speaks.

Guest Speakers on Teaching for Advanced Classes (40 mins)

  • Why are we talking about this?
    • Astro grads are required to teach 2 semesters (most don't like to teach the same class twice)
    • Decisions on next semester teaching are soon: Need to think about:
    • There's a list of questions you have to answer:
      1. This semester, do you WANT to teach or NEED to teach?
      2. If you NEED to teach, do you need a 25% or 50% position?
      3. If you WANT to teach, would you like a 25% or 50% position?
      4. How many semesters have you taught previously as a UC Berkeley astro grad student, and what classes have you taught?
      5. If you NEED to teach, list ALL of the classes available starting with the one you would most like to teach.
      6. If you WANT to teach, list ONLY the classes you would like to teach starting with the one you would most like to teach.
    • Dexter also says, “Be reasonable with your ranked list. For example, please don't say that you want to teach 50% and request astro 7 as your first choice.”
    • You must also calculate a “seniority” score for each of the classes on your list:
      • score = (# of semesters UCB grad student teaching experience) - 2 * (# of semesters you have taught that particular course)
      • Ay 7A and Ay 7B are considered to be the same course so if you've taught Ay 7 already, you almost certainly won't be teaching it again.
      • Zero is the minimum score.
      • “All GSI experience at 12.5% or higher counts for 1 point only. Astro 300, 199, and summer teaching also count.”
  • Jeff and Matt coming by to talk about teaching 7a/b and Stars

Assignments for next week (5 mins)

  • We have some stuff coming up next week
    1. Design-a-Demo initial presentations
      • 5 minutes proposing the demo you plan to design
    2. Peer Visitation recap
      • Turn in worksheet
      • What did you learn?
    3. Mid-semester evaluation summary reports & recap
      • Compile the following:
        1. consistent comments
        2. averages/standard deviations/histograms for any quantitative questions
        3. any hilarious, unfairly mean, or really thoughtful comments
        4. a personal assessment of what you've learned and what you'll change (and when)
    4. Teaching log check #2
  • Sorry all this piled up.. Hard to avoid given the class schedules

Section Planning (20 mins)

  • As usual, discuss section plans for next week.

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