This is my procrastination thread of the day... I start teaching an introductory first year seminar in October this year. I'm really looking forward to it and I'm flattered that my supervisors offered it to me. I'm used to doing private tuition but I know that teaching a class is going to be much more of a challenge.

I'm really interested in hearing your experiences of seminar teaching, good and bad, and some advice might be helpful as well!

Thanks, Natassia x

Hey Natassia, its brilliant that you have some teaching planned- enjoy!
Ill share with you what my professor shared with me the first time I had to teach a seminar...
It doesnt matter what level the students are ( year 1,2,3 etc ) because YOU WILL know more than them in whatever you are teaching.... Do you remember how it was in undergrad uni ... who actually read before hand for the class? you might have the odd two students but other wise .. they will not have clue .. so as long as you relay the class interestingly with visuals and so on for them you will be fine .. you will be better read cause you actually have to prepare for the seminar .. they just have to turn up and act interested;-)
All the very best.. let us know how it goes(up)

Heu Natassia!

When I started teaching there were always two of us in each seminar- a newbie PhD student and a final year one, just to make sure that the newbie had some support with the teaching side of things. In my first year we only had about 15 students in each seminar, which wasn't too bad, and most of them were of the non-responsive type anyway! Then in second year I was on a different module and had 80 final-year students all to myself! I was terrified! But after I'd done it a few times I was a lot more confident. You've got so much experience anyway with your tutoring that you're bound to be very good at explaining things, so I'm sure you'll be fine.

For me, the greatest problem was the students that needed so much spoon-feeding and would email you to ask 2000 questions about a single piece of coursework. I just knew that the reply I sent was going to be stored and used in evidence against me if I gave a pice of advice that didn't result in a good grade! But overall teaching was a good experience...not my favourite part of the PhD, but a good thing to do and have on your CV as well.

You'll have to let us know how it goes! Best, KB

My first teaching experience was tutoring third-year Undergrads and Masters students. A wee bit daunting. Still, I did plenty of prep and was sure to spend time encouraging students to interact with each, rather than just drone on at them for an hour. Things went really well and I actually quite enjoyed it, getting good student reviews at the end of the module too.

Definitely worthwhile and if you prepare well, I'm sure you'll have fun. Best of luck ;-)