Speaker: Susannah GAL
Share a piece of advice for a new, adjunct faculty member at Wentworth.
Susannah GAL: So what I would recommend to um a new adjunct faculty member is get to know the other people in your department um and get, you know, visit them, maybe talk to them, invite them for coffee. Um Get to know them and they can become a resource for you in multiple different ways. Um Resources for your class, resources for who else to meet, resources for what to do at the institution. Um And that allows you to feel more part of the Wentworth community and engage and hopefully enjoy your job more.
Give us your protips for managing conflict in the classroom.
Susannah GAL: Managing conflict is a tough thing. And so I guess it would depend on the conflict. Um and the um classroom, how big it is. Um What's the situation? Um And uh I think I would acknowledge the student's concern and then uh ask to postpone the discussion until, until um you have a chance to speak to them one on one. And I think it's important to acknowledge their concerns um especially in front of the class, but it's not helpful to derail the whole class for one or even a few students. Um use the time to settle things down, address the concern and then try and postpone it. Um the, the major discussion of it to another time you had a chance to react, relax and sort of think about how to respond. Um If it's between two students, it's also um a time to sort of um you know, work indicating if we want to be respectful um in our um interactions and accept that people may have differences of opinion. Um If it's between you and the students, then that's a different kind of thing. Um If you're gonna wanna think about that and and say, you'll, you'll think about their concerns and their aspect representing the conflict. Um And then hopefully have some time and, and engage other people to talk about how to manage it. You don't do this alone. We all have um challenges with conflict in the classroom. Um And so I think those are a couple of strategies um reach out to get other ideas of how to address it. Thanks.
Describe any successful strategies for responding to student disruption.
Provide some tips for unpacking unexpected assessment results with students.
Susannah GAL: So yes, but that can be a tough pain for some students to take um unexpected, you know, poor results. Um And so I would start with, you know, maybe, you know, that this, you said, I know this was a difficult thing, uh test or excitement for many of you. Please read my feedback. Some people set up one on one office hours to try and um talk to each student. Um and another time um on an exam where many students didn't do well. I said I won't give you the answers. I won't change your papers back but you get to retake the test, take home and I'll split the answers, um the, the scores between the two. And it was still pretty amazing that many of the students didn't get 100% of the uh assignment when they could take it home. So, um and work on it. So I think it, it being reasonable listening to their concerns and encouraging them that they can um improve.
