Defence of the Dark Art: The Practice of ‘Critical’ Reading – Mar. 6
This workshop is designed for the benefit of teaching assistants in the Liberal Arts, to develop skills and practices that can invite undergraduate students into, and cultivate a culture of, active reading and classroom discussions.
By engaging with ‘Critical’ Reading in this deliberate way, via this particular ‘5-question’ method, the intention of the workshop is to emphasize the learnability of this skill rather than relying on the automatic inculcation of it alone. In the workshop, each step of the process will be supplemented with different reading exercises for practice. At the end, participants will apply the whole method on one text, and will be encouraged to think about the possible merits and limitations of this method, along with suggestions for how to improve it. Part of the intention of this workshop is to challenge some of the assumptions often built into the project of ‘critical’ reading, and to think of how it might be helpful to approach this skill differently.
With practice, we hope that teaching assistants can help undergraduate students become more confident in their reading abilities, feel encouraged to participate more actively in classroom discussions, and engage more insightfully with their assignments. Teaching assistants in first- and second-year courses are particularly encouraged to be a part of this conversation on how to make this skill more widely accessible and meaningful.
This session will be facilitated by Ali Ahmed, a Senior Teaching Assistant in the Liberal Arts.
