When
Where
Small Practices, Big Impact: Building Belonging in Teaching Teams with Arin Haverland, Laura Van Dorn, and John Kanady
This session directly engages The Joy of Teaching by focusing on the people who sustain our classrooms: undergraduate TAs and Learning Assistants. When teaching team members feel they belong, their motivation and care ripple outward—strengthening student learning while renewing instructor joy and sustainability.
The insight: Research with 60 TAs and LAs reveals that belonging isn't built through major initiatives but through small, consistent practices—weekly icebreakers, soliciting course improvement ideas, acknowledging invisible struggles, and including individual voices.
The question: What small gestures can instructors implement immediately to help teaching team members feel valued, heard, and motivated?
The practice: This session shares discipline-agnostic, evidence-based strategies that any instructor supervising even one TA can implement without redesigning courses or adding significant workload. By centering intentional micro-practices rather than systemic overhauls, we acknowledge the reality of busy semesters while offering concrete ways to reduce isolation and restore energizing human connection.
Engagement: Participants will engage through multiple modes—guided reflection on their current teaching team strengths and challenges, small group brainstorming to adapt practices to their contexts, and collective toolkit building where groups share promising strategies organized in real-time into a collaborative digital resource.
Takeaways: (1) A personal commitment to implement one specific belonging-building practice with their teaching team, written on a take-home card for accountability; (2) Access to a co-created digital toolkit of belonging strategies with context-specific adaptations and implementation details for ongoing support.
This workshop is part of the Teaching Exchange Workshop Series. Building on the energy and ideas of the Teaching Exchange Symposium, this online workshop series brings TES sessions to a broader audience through accessible, virtual formats. Each session extends the conversation, offering deeper exploration, practical strategies, and continued connection around teaching and learning.