Do you struggle to balance the demands of teaching and research? Committing to both while making steady progress towards your degree presents a range of opportunities but also comes with some challenges. Balancing teaching and research requires its own kind of intentional, ongoing effort–for instance, how do you handle necessary lesson planning when you’re in the middle of writing? Add to this the ticking clock of your funding coming to an end and it’s easy to feel like something’s gotta give.

This workshop will offer strategies to help you balance your responsibilities as a teacher and a graduate student as well as offer resources and support to help you identify and plan for your goals. Topics to be covered include intentional planning of your research and teaching agendas, writing every day (or not), managing class preparation, and dealing with procrastination. You will leave this workshop with a plan to achieve your own goals. And maybe even some nights and weekends off.

This workshop was offered in Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 as an in-person workshop at the Graduate Center, CUNY. The workshop and materials were developed by Ryan Donovan.

Materials

All materials on this page and in the linked google folder are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC-BY-SA) 4.0 International Public License.

This folder contains outreach materials, workshop plans and slides.

Materials Folder: Balancing Teaching and Research as a Graduate Student

Workshop Plan

Welcome & Introductions 6:00-6:20

How can you set yourself up to achieve your goals? (balancing/juggling teaching and research)
The things you say yes or no to determine this balance
How to create structure in a structureless system?
Name/Level/Department & how much support does your department provide re: this topic/teaching experience?

Identifying Roadblocks/Setbacks/Emotions 6:20-6:40

Free write for 5 minutes

Prompts:

What are you struggling with? What’s working well?
What do you spend too much time on? Not enough time on?
What do you hope to get out of the workshop?

Think/Pair/Share

Pick 2 or 3 words/phrases that reflect your group’s conversation.

Securing your Time and Dealing with Procrastination 6:40-6:55

Work on a plan for next week

what works for you is what works: doesn’t need to be hour by hour
Make 3 to do lists: teaching, research, and life (5 minutes)

Then prioritize by marking each item A/B/C level. (5 minutes)

(from Joli Jensen, Write No Matter What)
This is about using your energy wisely: A=most energetic, B=require alertness &
focus but not best creativity, C=rote tasks, email, etc.
Jensen: “We can match our energies to our priorities.” (33)
NYT on attention management

Discussion (6:50-6:55)

Notice what energizes you and what drains you: structure your day around this
Actually spend one or two days creating a “reverse planner”: noting what you actually are spending time on in 15 min increments
What you spend time on reveals your priorities: Your schedule doesn’t lie
Action precedes motivation. (NYT article)

Strategies to avoid procrastination

Use the Pomodoro method (or another timer)
Turn off email and social media (consider using StayFocusd or other browser
extension) and schedule limited times during the day for email
Boice: “Active Waiting” as a way to forestall rushing and/or procrastination
Filling free moments w/ reflection
Helps to moderate time spent preparing

Other methods of attention management:

Try bullet journaling
Eisenhower Box: quadrant of urgent/important vs. not urgent/not important
Writing is almost never “urgent” but teaching often feels urgent because you have warm bodies in a room waiting for you

Intentional Planning 6:55-7:15

Individual work on 2 year plans
Consider your work/life boundaries (i.e., evenings and weekends)
Decide what counts as markers of progress for you.
What are your career goals?
- Are they in/out of the academy?
- How can you balance preparing for both?
Come up with a 3-5 year research and teaching plan to graduation/beyond
- What are your research goals?
- What are the steps you can take to achieve them?
- What’s the timeline?
Come up with a teaching plan toward graduation/beyond
- What would you like to teach before you graduate?
- Where can you teach it?
- Can you teach your research somewhere?
What other obligations map onto this plan?
- WAC? Other fellowship? Jobs? Family?
- Be realistic–what’s a stretch goal and what’s do-able? Include both!

Preparing for Class/Teaching 7:15-7:40

2 minute free write:

How attached are you to “covering the material”?
How much time do you spend preparing for class?
How often do you run out time in class? (what will you do today in the time you have)
Are you over-preparing? Or preparing in binges?
How much preparation is enough?

You will likely learn by overpreparing vs. feeling like an authority

- Over-preparing content vs. pedagogy

Underpreparing doesn’t mean you’re not serving your students well

- - Figuring this out comes with experience
  - Boice advocates for brief, regular sessions

Are you assigning too much content?

Decide how you want students to engage,knowing you may or may not get to it all in class.

Strategies to Share the Load/Active Learning 7:20-7:35

Robert Boice’s 8 Rules of Moderation from Advice for New Faculty Members (Boston: Allynand Bacon, 2000, p. 99)

Wait, reflect, and learn–rather than rush, impatiently and impulsively.
Begin early at truly important tasks, before feeling fully ready.
Work in brief, economical sessions.
Stop in timely fashion, before diminishing returns set in.
Moderate over-attachments to what you prepare/present–and overreactions to criticism.
Moderate negative thoughts and excessive emotions.
Let others, even critics, do some of the work.
Teach with compassion, communicate with immediacy and comprehension, and this decreases student (and faculty) incivilities.

Incorporate collaboration as a way of class preparation

Discuss how you can find ways to share the responsibility that empower students

Discussion Strategies

Let students lead the discussion (in groups or individually)
Use blogs/discussion boards IRL as starting point
Can you rely on colleagues? Archived course materials?
Note: archiving your course for next time as a way of moderating preparation

Teaching your own research 7:35-7:40

How to find opportunities
How to approach: research methodologies for their own students’ projects
Middle place: of teaching research question not the content

Creating Habits and Routines, Writing Every Day? Or not. 7:40 to 7:50

write every day?/writing habit: 10 minutes

Distinguish writing needs from writing preferences (e.g., perfect conditions)
Try a deadline-based approach like Wendy Belcher’s book Writing Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks
What counts as “writing”? Decide what counts as markers of progress for you (reading/writing a certain no. of pages/planning 2 classes/finishing a draft/etc)
David Sternberg (How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral Dissertation) suggests 3 steps to help get “unstuck”: create a project box, use a ventilation file, write at least 15 minutes every day.
Joli Jensen: “frequent low-stress contact with a writing project is the secret to long-term productivity.” (56) “Scholarly writing should be an activity we respect and believe in. It is not just “one more thing.” It is the main thing in our professional lives.” (59)

Space for reflection and troubleshooting 7:50-8:00