seeking some teaching advice from the academics!
i'm aware of a few academics/faculty that follow me, so here goes.
I'm a postdoctoral fellow. Unfortunately, I'm stationed at an institution that doesn't offer any kind of courses, so I'm limited when it comes to in-house teaching experience that the average postdoc at a university would have access to. So, I've been checking out the local community college scene (there are MANY near Monterey) for part time adjunct positions in my field (geology/oceanography).
I was a teaching assistant MANY times....and not just the kind the graded papers. I used to teach the lab section material and then guide the students through it (for the intro courses). For the upper level labs I taught, I made up my own lab syllabus and lab exercises based on what was necessary for understanding the lecture material. Two years ago I helped team-teach a mineralogy course and worked a bit on the course syllabus. However, I've never built an entire course syllabus myself.
So here's my big questions:
How do you make the jump from TA-ing a lab to teaching a full-on syllabus driven course multiple days each week? If you're coming in as a part-time adjunct for an existing course, does the department usually have something already somewhat put together for a syllabus/course material, or do you have to create this from scratch?
I'm kind of crapping my pants because I really don't have time on top of my research and getting renewed and published to build a syllabus from SCRATCH. But I know I need more teaching on my CV for future hiring purposes....so it's a bit of a catch 22....
Also, any teaching advice and/or resources would be really appreciated. (Tagging professorfangirl because I bet she has some!)
