This is going to be my busiest year yet on the teaching and (especially) the grading side. I am working as a teaching assistant for the same second year Canadian politics course which I taught last year. This time the professor has decided to structure the tutorials as debates on topics like whether to change Canada’s electoral system or lower the voting age. Compared with the standard approach of discussing the readings, this seems likely to produce more student engagement.
I also got a job as a TA for the first year graduate environmental decision-making course which is part of all the collaborative programs U of T offers in environmental studies. I am told it’s quite unusual to be a TA in a graduate level course. I will mostly be grading, but I will also be delivering a lecture next Friday on EU fishery access agreements in West Africa.
This should all be comparatively feasible since I am not taking any courses in the fall term, though my main focus has to be on putting together my dissertation proposal and getting it through the necessary departmental and ethical reviews.
