December 20, 2021
Greetings to all.
I understand we are going to get together on January 15 to talk about teaching and learning. I am very much looking forward to it and wish I were with you in person.
We are going to focus on seminar teaching which we all do but has some very unique elements which may not be readily apparent on the surface.
The format that I will use is a class within a class:
Marc will divide the participants into 4 groups.
There will be 4 seminars where I will demonstrate strategies of seminar teaching.
After each class, we will open it for discussion with the entire group.
Marc will distribute 4 articles on teaching.
Each article will be discussed in each class.
I am sure this is terribly confusing but it will become clear as we do it.
I want to communicate with you by email before the actual meeting. So keep a look out for the emails. I know that this is a festive time of the year and I worry that these messages might become lost.
I chair a study group on teaching and learning for the American and our workshop may become a prototype for workshops that we can do on the national level. We are thinking of providing a support group on teaching following the workshop. There will be two observers from our study group at our DPC workshop.
I hope that is agreeable to you.
More to come.
Cheers, Jerry
Dear Colleagues,
Faculty Development has become a fourth pillar of the recommended standards by APsA. I believe that teaching is a critical aspect of our community and so I would like to begin our faculty development workshops with this as a focus. Gerald Melchiode, M.D. and Lorie Ammon, LPC are in a COPS study group at the American whose focus is on teaching and faculty development. In discussions with them an idea took shape. Dr. Melchiode has agreed to meet with us January 15th, 2022. He will premier a seminar that, if successful, will be a program that will be advanced on the national level. The program is entitled:
“A Model Seminar : Reflecting on Teaching while Discussing Articles on Teaching”.
Dr. Melchiode describes the experience in this way, “I would conduct a model seminar class with the participants while explaining what I am doing. A high wire act while playing chess at the same time.”
We would like all members of DPC to participate including candidates and advanced candidates, who are our teachers of tomorrow, to attend. We will be distributing four papers on teaching. The idea, as it stands, is for us to rotate four different groups, each of which represents a class who will be dealing with one particular paper at a time, while the larger group observes.
In the Spring, CODI has invited Anton Hart, Ph.D. to return to work with us in person as a continuation on his meeting with us regarding RDI issues. We will make use of this opportunity as a faculty development experience.
This is an exciting and disorienting time in our field and in the larger world. I think we are all trying to absorb the changes and to think about how we can creatively engage these ideas for the benefit of our patients, our Center, and our communities. The APsA leadership has quoted Plutarch in thinking of education- “The mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled.” I believe that pursuing this ideal can invigorate us and inspire us to be our best selves.
Warmly,
Marc Litle, M.D. Faculty Chair
FOUR ARTICLES for Consideration and Review in Preparation for the Workshop will be sent to each registered attendee:
Psychoanalytic Education Section: Original Papers Analyst as Teacher / Teacher as Analyst: A Confusion of Tongues?
Dawn Skorczewski
Questioning Authority in the Psychoanalytic Classroom
Dawn Skorczewski PhD
A Consideration of Knowledge and Authority in the Case Seminar
Dolan Power PhD
Becoming a School: Developing Learning Objectives for Psychoanalytic Education
Deborah Cabaniss MD