Apr. 17th, 2007

livingdeb: (Default)
One of my co-workers has been there since the beginning of my system, then he was switched to other work, and now he is back.

Yesterday, he answered a question of mine based partly on knowledge of the system that was older than mine, as he usually does, but this time he didn't know that the information he was using had changed.

Yep, in the olden days, our system used to get improvements. So I learned a little bit more of the history of it. But until we were all in on that history, things were getting awfully frustrating.
livingdeb: (Default)
I have found another job to apply for: Supplemental Instruction Coordinator. If it's been a while since you've been to college (or if you've never been), then it's quite possible you've never heard of supplemental instruction. It turns out that this is a term which has a similar meaning across many universities.

The way it works is that a tutoring center or learning center hires the same kinds of students they would hire to become tutors: people who have done well in the relevant course. Then each one gets assigned to a course and they have to attend every lecture, do all the work, and hold at least three study sessions a week. These aren't totally formal like so-called "discussion sections" that TA's hold. Nor are they totally informal like a walk-in tutoring service. They help the students currently taking the course to understand the concepts, figure out the homework, and learn study skills. (Although I think "study skills" are referred to as "learning strategies" these days.)

What a Supplemental Instruction Coordinator does is to train these students on how to do a good job with their study sections, how to communicate with the course's instructor, different ways to teach learning strategies, and other stuff like that. And they go around doing PR for the program with professors. They also seem to have the other usual learning center duties such as teaching study skills courses and advising students.

And what are the qualifications for such a position? A master's degree. In anything at all. (That's me!) And three years of experience in "learning development."

Now, unlike "supplemental instruction," I don't see a consistent meaning for the phrase "learning development," so I'm just going to have to make an educated guess. My guess is that it includes all the stuff that happens in learning centers such as tutoring, giving classes on study skills and time management, and teaching test prep courses.

If that's true, then I can count my year as a tutor in the very place I'm applying to work plus two years as a tutor at Sylvan Learning Centers.

Preferred qualifications include:

* Experience teaching at the university level - I was a TA for one year
* Participation in, or coordination of, a Supplemental Instruction program - nope, never heard of it until recently
* Experience delivering training - I'll talk about training people to use the degree audit system
* Excellent written and oral communication skills - I hope they'll conclude this from my cover letter and interview
* Experience using SPSS software - I don't even remember which software package I used, but having gotten two degrees in social sciences, I at least have a clue.

I'm also going to include additional academic experience - scoring teacher certification tests for 11 years, typing for professors for ten years, being a student teacher at a high school for a couple of months, and being a teacher's aid at three junior high schools for most of a school year.

I was at a meeting with someone who works at this place and asked her what they're looking for for this position. She mentioned things that were listed in the job description and also that they should be someone who can work with grad students, that supervisory experience would be good but is not necessary. This implies they don't expect to find anyone who already knows how to do everything.

(After the meeting, during my whole walk back to my office, my heart was pounding. I don't know why it's so stressful to ask people questions like that, but I really, really hate it.)

For supervisory experience, I could list the summer when I was a head camp counselor and the following summer when I was an outdoor program director. It doesn't sound like much, but I totally learned some supervisory lessons then, like you should always delegate. No matter how obvious it is that it would just be quicker and easier to do everything yourself than to get your underlings in the habit of doing things and doing them right, it's just not true. Even if you only have your underlings for five days, it's still worth the extra trouble the first two and a half days to get to stop running around like crazy for the last couple of days.

I'm also going to mention my teaching certifications in math and social studies.

I looked up which courses have supplemental instruction. It's supposed to be large courses that people have trouble passing, usually weed-out courses (ahem, gateway courses) and developmental (high-school level) courses. So I expected mostly math and science and engineering. But no. Bizarrely, this spring's offerings are mostly subjects I have significant experience in: subjects I'm certified to teach high school in (history, economics, government, sociology, and math), my favorite science (biology), and advertising and communications studies.

So could I get hired? Maybe.

Could I do the job? A job I'd never heard of before much less done? At first I was wondering how I could possibly train students to run these sessions. I don't know. But I found their resource manual online and it reminded me that I already know a lot of this stuff. Also I learned that there are several Supplemental Instruction Program Coordinators, one of whom is the Program Director. Which implies that I can get help and maybe even training. So I've decided that I am going to let them be the ones to decide whether I can do the job and I'm just going to proceed as if I can. If I get hired, I'll start catching up more in this field. Already I've learned there's a thing called the Association for the Tutoring Profession (ATP) and another thing called the National College Learning Center Association (NCLCA).

(All advice appreciated, since I suck at applying for jobs.)

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