{"id":7856,"date":"2025-07-22T21:01:41","date_gmt":"2025-07-22T21:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/?p=7856"},"modified":"2026-01-18T23:10:48","modified_gmt":"2026-01-19T04:10:48","slug":"instructor-meeting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/07\/instructor-meeting\/","title":{"rendered":"Preparing for instructor conferences"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Saturdays bring instructor conferences and a litany of conversation topics for cherubs to fill the time. Jasmine Guo of Shanghai said she wasn\u2019t sure what to to expect during her first conference with instructor Carlin McCarthy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI do feel seriously underprepared for every single meeting, because it\u2019s 20 minutes and I can&#8217;t think of anything to talk about for, like, 20 minutes,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Now, Guo creates a mental list of a few questions regarding her assignments and treats her conferences like interviews to fill the time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instructor Erin Ailworth said she allows cherubs to decide what they discuss during meetings so she doesn\u2019t \u201chijack the conversation.\u201d She also prepares potential topics in case cherubs are unsure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cIt is Saturday morning, and I know I&#8217;m getting tired cherubs, so their brains might not be fully on if they haven&#8217;t had coffee or time to wake up yet,\u201d Ailworth said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Instructor Ava Thompson Greenwell addresses individual writing and completes edit exercises with cherubs. She said her conferences are structured and consistent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Gavin Lin of Palo Alto, California, brings his annotated assignments to conferences with instructor John Kupetz to decipher them together. Afterward, he talks about his publication and \u201cthen dogs, prior students and a mysterious coffee stain on his desk.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI think it was very easy to fill the time with John,\u201d he said, \u201cand he actually makes me feel like he&#8217;s a very good listener.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Ailworth and Greenwell both said they appreciate talking to cherubs about their experiences throughout the program.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI do wish they would ask more questions\u2026 sometimes there&#8217;s some shyness, there&#8217;s some intimidation,\u201d Greenwell said. \u201cBut I think you want to leave the meeting as clear as possible.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cherubs learn to break the silence during Saturday morning instructor meetings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":10311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[426],"class_list":["post-7856","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics"],"acf":[],"authors":[{"term_id":426,"user_id":270,"is_guest":0,"slug":"lynnclaratun","display_name":"Lynn-Clara Tun","avatar_url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cc094713428d02067c68a69e778ab039235686b95b7f10f11a40ad6662ecc893?s=96&d=mm&r=g","author_category":"","user_url":"","last_name":"Tun","first_name":"Lynn-Clara","job_title":"","description":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7856"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10459,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7856\/revisions\/10459"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7856"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cherubs.medill.northwestern.edu\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=7856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}