Beginning with a series of questions designed to peak reader curiosity and expose key challenges for mid-career faculty, the authors uncover several issues in post-tenure faculty life and work, and they reflect on images for understanding and responding to these challenges. Topics identified include midcareer as an opportunity for deeper investment in one's teaching, challenges associated with competing claims for time, shifts in research that can accompany the transition to mid-career, challenges in dealing with an increasing generational gap between oneself and one's students, responsibilities associated with being a longerterm member of a faculty, and feelings of fatigue and occasional alienation from one's educational institution and/or church.
This collection of essays tackles thorny questions related to critical incidents in teaching. By using different pedagogical methods and techniques, each author provokes creative thinking about how to address specific concerns common to teaching. The authors demonstrate that the teaching and learning process must make room for -if not celebrate -the surprises that happen not only to the students, but to the teachers as well. The discussion of critical incidents helps to promote reflection on teaching practice and prompt insights into the intricate dynamics shaping the increasingly diverse learning community. Each individual essay is accompanied by reflection questions that can be used to spark conversation among colleagues and/or prompt further personal reflection on teaching and learning.At mid-career, we have the freedom to take more risks than we could as new teachers. Having prepared hundreds of lectures, graded thousands of papers, and handled crises large and small, we have earned the right and can face the unexpected rather than run from it.While other professionals routinely meet and discuss difficult cases from their practice, teachers seldom invite colleagues into their classrooms or have the opportunity to talk about issues raised in teaching. At a mid-career teaching workshop sponsored by the Wabash Center, we took the risks to share moments in our teaching in which we were "taken with surprise."The discussion of critical incidents in teaching turned out to be the most rewarding part of the workshop. For some, this was their first time to talk freely about these incidents and to have their trusted colleagues listen in and offer comments. We used a variety of methods to facilitate our conversations, such as role play (with another person playing the teacher), a fishbowl discussion technique, and even imagining one case as a cartoon! In the process, we learned much about the intricacies and practical details of teaching and had fun doing so. We are convinced that other colleagues will find writing and discussing critical incidents helpful for talking about teaching within their own contexts. To that end, we are offering here for readers' use some incidents from our own classrooms, with names and some details changed to protect anonymity. Keep in mind, however, incidents from your own experience and context will likely be even more enlightening and helpful.
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