Teaching Partners: Real Reflections from Real Classrooms
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This spring, UIC instructors will have an opportunity to open their classroom doors, and their teaching practices, to a colleague through Teaching Partners, CATE’s peer-observation program. Teaching Partners pairs instructors to record and digitally share a class session, meet as a small group with a CATE team member for a debrief, and reflect on the experience. The program’s emphasis isn’t on evaluation, but on seeing one’s teaching through another instructor’s eyes, identifying patterns, and making small, strategic changes that strengthen learning. Two participants from biological sciences, Alex Daemicke Hanson and Michael Mills, reflected on what they learned through the Teaching Partners program and their partnership
Alex Daemicke Hanson: Teaching with Students’ Perspectives in Mind
When Alex’s BIOS 343 class was recorded, she happened to be tackling notoriously difficult content for students: renal physiology and endocrine regulation. Her goal was to slow things down, build connections, and help students place each new mechanism into the semester-long “puzzle” of the human body.
Before the program, Alex admitted she was nervous about receiving peer feedback. After participating, she described the experience as affirming, a chance to revisit instincts she already had about pacing, engagement, and reaching students who sit quietly in the back. The biggest takeaway? A renewed commitment to reflect after each lecture rather than waiting until later on to reset: “As we get busy during the semester, I think we tend to complete a lecture and not really think about it until we do it again the next semester. Teaching Partners has reminded me the importance of stopping and considering ways to make each lecture better rather than moving on and being ok with keeping things the way they are. There are always ways to improve.”
Additionally, Alex’s participation in the program reminded her of the importance of taking the students’ perspective when lecturing and crafting the curriculum of her courses. “I try very hard to take the students’ perspective while lecturing. I find that by thinking about my class as if I were a student enrolled in it, it allows me to recognize the appropriate places to take pauses or do a more thorough job breaking down a complex physiological mechanism. The comments provided by [others in the program] allowed me to further think about my class from the students’ perspective, particularly the perspective of students sitting in the back and who are less participative.”
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I try very hard to take the students’ perspective while lecturing. I find that by thinking about my class as if I were a student enrolled in it, it allows me to recognize the appropriate places to take pauses or do a more thorough job breaking down a complex physiological mechanism.
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Michael Mills: Rethinking Scaffolding and Pacing
Michael’s recorded lecture picked up mid-unit as he introduced attenuation and other molecular regulation strategies in prokaryotes. He was also testing how students would respond to strategically-placed videos and real-world molecular applications.
Michael routinely reviews his own recorded lectures, so sharing on camera brought no concerns. Teaching Partners, however, helped surface a long-standing challenge: pacing. Some students find his delivery too fast. Others want more momentum. Peer comments affirmed his pacing more than he expected, but they also sharpened the question of whether the curriculum’s depth asks too much, too quickly.
Grounded in a teaching philosophy built on scaffolded gamification and expectancy-value motivation theory, Michael realized that his scaffolds may be stacking a bit too quickly for students to successfully climb. The reflection process helped him see opportunities to integrate more intentional scaffolding, add poll questions for interaction, and connect those polls back to his gamified structure. His next steps are to start small, tighten the connections, and build more rhythm into the classroom experience.
Why These Reflections Matter
Teaching Partners isn’t about fixing classrooms, but about helping instructors see their teaching with fresh eyes. Alex rediscovered the power of intentional pauses and student-perspective thinking. Michael found clarity around pacing and structure in a content-heavy course. Both walked away with renewed purpose, concrete next steps, and the reminder that connecting with peers can bring new insights into our teaching.
If you want to learn more about the program, visit the Teaching Partners website at https://teaching.uic.edu/programs/teaching-partners/.