Department of English
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(View as a word document)Policy on English 680: Teaching Internship
English 680: Teaching Internship in English, is designed to introduce masters students to college teaching and to allow doctoral students to broaden their preparation for teaching. Ordinarily, masters students intern in lower division courses (100- and sometimes 200-level); PhD students may intern in upper division courses for majors. Under no circumstances are interns to be placed in courses at the 500-level or above. Interns who have teaching or grading duties must register for English 680.
Nature of Internship:
Internships are designed as work with or under a mentor, not as team-teaching experiences. Masters students will normally have insufficient course work to hold a teaching position; PhD students may have ample course work completed, but they also have substantial duties as TAs in one or two courses they teach independently each semester. Further, undergraduates who enroll in upper-level English courses reasonably expect that the course will be taught by a member of the faculty. Accordingly, interns are expected to teach under direct supervision of the faculty member in charge of the class, with no more than one class taken by the student in the absence of the supervising faculty member. In extraordinary and unexpected circumstances (jury duty, illness, etc.), the faculty can, in consultation with the Graduate Director, modify this policy.Intern’s Responsibilities:
Interns should be required to do no more than an average of 10 hours work per week, including class preparation and attendance, grading, student conferences and teaching. They are responsible for consulting with the faculty member in the planning stages of the course and syllabus, where possible, and for working with the faculty member in all aspects of the course, including responding to assignments and teaching classes. It is normally expected that in intern will teach one “unit” of a course (e.g. a text, an author, a section of a topic); in a literature course, for example, this might amount to about two or three weeks, while in a writing course it might amount to the preparation and revision of one paper or story.
When students should take the internship:
Normally masters students should take the internship after at least 12 hours of graduate course work are completed. Students awarded a GTCC teaching assistantship after they have finished 18 hours should enroll in English 680 and be supervised by the Director of the GTCC Faculty-in-Training program. PhD students should defer the internship until the end of their regular course work; this deferral helps them to maintain continuous enrollment without exceeding allowable dissertation hours and allows them to target their internship toward their preparation for the job market.
Who can supervise the internship:
Ordinarily tenured or tenure-track members of the graduate faculty supervise internships. Exceptions may be made under unusual circumstances in consultation with the Department Head.
For more information, contact:
Ms. Alyson Everhart
3137 Moore Hall for Humanities and Research Administration
(336) 334-5311