Teaching Café, Winter 2025

Join us for an engaging session designed to give you quick insights on classroom management. Hear from some of our most seasoned instructors as they share brief presentations on the pedagogical innovations they’re trying out in the classroom.

Afterward, we’ll open the floor for candid conversations about the challenges and successes we experience as instructors. Whether you’re an experienced teacher or new to the field, this is an opportunity to connect, learn, and explore new strategies to elevate your teaching. Faculty, course instructors, teaching assistants and graduate students welcome!

About the Presenters and Presentations:

Bob Davidson will talk about incorporating food to deepen students’ engagement with course material. He is Professor of Spanish and Catalan in our department, Mary Rowell Jackman Professor of Humanities at Victoria College and affiliated faculty with the Culinaria Research Centre. He specializes in Modern Peninsular Literature and Culture with an emphasis on cultural theories of food and hospitality.

Ana Teresa Pérez will demonstrate ways to integrate ChatGPT into activities in the language. She is a Professor of Spanish and Linguistics, and Chair of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese. Her research seeks to understand how children (monolingual and bilingual) learn the syntax and semantics of the smallest and silent components of sentence grammar.

Paula Karger will introduce a system to handle students’ extension requests. She is an Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, of Latin American Studies and Spanish. Her research focuses on cultural exchange, specifically between Arabic, Spanish, and Yucatec Mayan in the medieval and colonial periods. She also studies the impact of experiential learning and global classrooms on the development of intercultural skills as part of her work as an educational developer.