McCarty—who has worked in the Office of Undergraduate Education since 2007—says he has noticed a decrease in undergraduate complaints about their TFs’ language skills, and a rise in CUE guide scores for foreign TFs.

But the improvement in evaluations have coincided with an array of workshops and classes offered by the Bok Center—including this year’s pilot program.

“The Bok Center’s focus on understanding the American classroom is crucial,” McCarty says about continued support for TFs’ interactions with undergraduates.

TEACHING THE TEACHERS

The Bok Center has recently reemphasized its focus on acclimating the foreign TF through the new semester-long course that utilizes undergraduate perspectives to help graduate students better understand the Harvard classroom.

The success of the eight-person class in the fall semester compelled the Bok Center to offer a second section in the spring. The Center accepted 16 of the 40 graduate students who applied for a spot in the class.

“There’s a need and a desire for this kind of thing,” says Maurer, who hopes the program will continue next semester.

To foster better communication with undergraduates, graduate students meet weekly with the College students working in the course for informal discussion.

In the classroom, eight GSAS students sit with two undergraduates and discuss cultural issues and current events, says course head Pamela Pollock, who is working on a dissertation about foreign students’ experiences in the American graduate school system.

“It’s really hard to build small talk if you don’t have the cultural base to know what’s going on,” Pollock says.

Last week, for example, students were asked to read an article about the intensity of the American college process. The exercise provided students the basic tools to engage in conversation both inside and outside the classroom, according to Pollock.

The course is not designed as a structural language course—such as an ESL class—but rather seeks to help graduate students practice “oral communication” across cultural barriers, Maurer says.

At Harvard, foreign TFs face pedagogical and cultural differences that do not always stem from insufficient language skills, Maurer says.

She describes one teaching fellow for Social Analysis 10—the popular introductory economics course commonly known as Ec 10—who received subpar CUE guide scores and complaints about his language skills from students in his section.

When Maurer began working with the individual, she reviewed a film of one of his classes and found that language was not the problem—the TF was teaching at a level too high for the students, she says.