Nooks and Crannies and Center Stages: Exploring the Role of the Teaching and Learning Center— A Message From the Executive Editor

Abstract

One of my most recent charges--in a non-Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) capacity, at least not officially--involved training my department's new graduate associates to teach the university's first-year writing sequence. During a weekly workshop devoted to this training, one of these new teachers informed her cohort she had been having a conflict with the instructor whose class followed hers. The dispute, she explained, involved the 10-minute transition between classes, that time in which her students were exiting the classroom and the other teacher's students had begun to enter. The GA was particularly shaken up over the attitude of this other teacher, who seemed annoyed that the GA still occupied the space that the other teacher now clearly saw as her own. "A lot of times students want to stay after class to talk to me, quick questions," the GA told our group, "or I have to gather my stuff together, log off the computer, and she's already at the desk, banging books around or breathing all heavy at the chalkboard."
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