For more details on the award, see the U of T TATP Course Instructor Award homepage.
In 2015, I was nominated by my former students and selected as the top U of T graduate student Course Instructor across all three campuses and all disciplines.
I am especially proud of this award because the bulk of my teaching had been in interdisciplinary first-year academic writing courses. As these first-year writing courses are frequently required classes for non-majors, and as these courses cover dry material like grammar and essay structuring, I am proud to know that my teaching practices made my courses compelling and relevant for my students.
At the time, I wrote, "[This award is] one of the most important accomplishments of my career as a PhD student. I don’t consider myself a ‘natural’ as a teacher. I took a year off to teach at a university in France between my MA and the first year of my PhD, and, without training or experience in the classroom, regularly felt ineffective and frustrated. It was only when I returned to the University of Toronto and began to talk to excellent teachers about their teaching—my peers, my own instructors, and the profs for whom I TA’d—that I began to shape my ideas about what deep learning, and, in turn, good teaching, look like in practice.
This recognition, coming as it does from my former students and the faculty members I’ve worked with, suggests that the work I’ve put in to developing as a teacher has paid off. I was very surprised, and very thankful, to have found myself recognized this way."
You can read my Q&A with the awarding body on the U of Toronto TATP Teaching Award website.