The department requires that TFs complete boththeoretical and practical courses in teaching.

These courses address issues such as how toteach the first lesson and how to make thestudents feel comfortable. The department alsoasks its graduate students to do "mini-teaching,"or teaching on a small scale, before entering aclassroom.

Practical teaching knowledge is essential forteaching fellows, Mueller says."

It's like learning to play the piano. You can'tjust learn it theoretically," she says. "It's gotto be applied right away and practiced."

And if a graduate student is not deemed readyto teach, he or she is often sent abroad toprepare further in his or her specialty, Muellersays.

Romance Language TFs say that the training hasimproved their teaching.

"I find it extremely effective because it makesyou comfortable to start out when you're facedwith a classroom at Harvard," Baptista-Morey says."I'm very positive that it would have made a bigdifference if I hadn't had the training."

Constructive communication with the course headis integral to successful teaching, she says, and"constant supervision and feedback" make theprogram a success.

In the Core Curriculum, as in the FAS as awhole, training is a decentralized process. And asin the Faculty, quality varies remarkablydepending on the standards of individual courseheads.

According to Susan Lewis, director of theCore, the size of Core classes and the diversityof their students likely make teaching them moredemanding.

"The need for some more formal systematictraining may be higher," she says.

But the Core's requirement for formalsystematic training is no more strict than in therest of the FAS.

Course heads generally respond to difficultiesby referring TFs to the Bok Center, which mightcraft a "mini-tutorial" in case of seriousdifficulty, she says.

The Bok Center is in fact the FAS' onlysignificant Faculty-wide resource for training TFsand others in the art of teaching. But it is not aresource anyone is required by Faculty rules touse.

Under current procedures, Buell may interveneand suggest increased levels of training for TFswho are experiencing difficulties or who havereceived very low CUE ratings. But he is limitedto "suggestion" and cannot force a graduatestudent to seek help at the Bok Center.