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YesI did an introductory session on OOP in MATLAB and solving differential equations for all first year bioengineering graduate students.I also prepared and taught 5 lectures in thermodynamics and one in transport processes for bio and chemical engineers (sophomores/juniors).I have had plenty of other opportunities (including teaching fellowships) that I have had to pass on, because the only thing that will get you anywhere in academia is "publishing good quality papers". Or so I am told.The easiest thing to do is to convince your advisor that you are (a) interested in teaching, (b) enjoy it very much and (c) are good it. Your advisor will either let you teach his/her class when he/she is not around or at a conference, and also let you know of other opportunities.But before that you have to TA first and establish yourself as someone who is good. In my program, all graduate students have to TA for one year. When you spend 5-6hrs a week, solving problems and interacting with 50-100 students for a year, people know if you are good. Students also get to fill out evaluation forms for TAs (at least in Maryland), so, if you make an impression, your department and other faculty members will know about it as well.Many schools award their best teaching assistants with distinguished/outstanding teaching assistant awards. Getting one of those awards will give you some recognition and credibility that you can build on.Graduate schools also offer teaching fellowships, some even let you prepare and teach summer courses. It might be a good idea to check your graduate school website for more details.PS: This answer is only applicable to (most or at least some) STEM programs in the U.S.

A2A: I apologize in advance for the too-long answer, but this is a big and complicated question.There's a LOT of variation in the evaluation process from one university, department, and program to another, and even from one individual evaluator to another.I can tell you what my process has been for the past few years on the admissions committee of Carnegie Mellon's School of Computer Science (SCS), Language Technologies Institute (LTI). My focus has been on applicants for our PhD program and the Master of Language Technologies program -- a research-oriented masters program.Bear in mind that this is just one data point and not typical. Actually, there's probably no such thing as "typical" -- there's too much variation, even between members of the same committee.Also, the increase in our number of applicants and the creation of several professional masters programs have put a lot of strain on our existing system, and there have been active discussions about how to streamline our process. For example, we may be forced to do a lot more pre-filtering and pre-summarization by well-trained staff.In CMU SCS, we use an online system, common across all (or most) of our departments, for securely collecting all the materials relevant to each case. The same system provides for entry of comments by the reviewers and any other faculty.In LTI we had about 350 applications for the MLT and PhD programs, plus several hundred more applicants for the three professional masters programs administered through LTI. I'll address only the MLT/PhD process.In our system we use a committee of about a dozen faculty volunteers to pre-screen and pre-rank the proposals. That's basically done as a service to the other faculty, who are free to look only at our top-ranked candidates or at any others who are of interest to them.The head of our admissions committee has traditionally evaluated ALL the applications (I'm not sure how much longer we can keep that up), and all the other applications get at least one other review from committee members, plus a third evaluation (and occasionally more) if there is any significant disagreement among the first two. So this is a lot of work for everyone involved.The work must all be done at the end of December and over most of the month of January (which is also a busy month for proposal and conference deadlines). I reviewed about 60 applications this year, and about 90 the year before. Usually it takes me about 30 minutes to do each of the first few, and then maybe 10 or 15 minutes once I get rolling. Some obvious rejects are quicker, and some complicated cases take more time and perhaps some discussion with other faculty, or gathering of additional information.The committee tries to note each applicant's area(s) of interest, if that's clear from the folder, and also notes specific faculty members who should look at the folder, either because the applicant mentioned them or their project, or because it's just an obvious match.The faculty at large have some time to review the top-ranked candidates and any others that interest them, looking at the online forms with rankings and comments by the committee. Then we have a big meeting of all the faculty to make the final decisions.In LTI, as a rule, we offer PhD admission only to students for whom we are confident of success in our program, and for whom at least one faculty member is willing to advise and commit a funded slot. We also offer direct PhD admission to a few superstars each year, regardless of whether we have identified funding for them -- sort of an internal fellowship. That's a gamble, since PhD students without outside funding eat up a big part of our discretionary budget. But we are working to increase the resources available so that we can make more such offers.The other students who look good to us are offered MLT admission, usually without a promise of funding. Most of the MLT students who come here in the fall do find funded slots soon after they arrive. MLT students who do well and whose advisors want to keep them generally are admitted to our PhD program with no problem; a few of them choose to go to other PhD programs at this point.My own evaluation routine for applicants from outside CMU goes something like this:First, try to get a quick overall picture of the applicant, mostly by reading/skimming the Resume and Statement of Purpose (SOP). What are the applicant's major interests, and are there specific faculty for whom this application should be flagged? Is this person applying as a fresh BS or after getting a masters degree or after some time in industry? What school(s), and who wrote letters? Are there publications?One question I ask during this process is whether the applicant is a good fit for LTI -- is there any evidence of real interest in the research we do in LTI, or is this, for example, a computer-vision person for whom LTI is a distant Nth choice?Second, is this person a native English speaker? And, if not, can this person speak English well enough to succeed in our program? For that I look mostly at the TOEFL scores, if they are recent. If the scores are good, no problem.If the TOEFL scores are bad -- any of them -- I'll look for other evidence. If the applicant provided a video, how good is the English on that? (It's not very strong evidence if they just read a script or recite a memorized statement, which is usually pretty obvious. We're looking for spontaneous speech.)Verbal and writing GREs provide some evidence. If a recommendation letter says that the person communicates well in English, that can over-ride a bad TOEFL score -- but only if we believe the letter-writer is fluent in English. If the English in the SOP is full of errors, that is pretty strong negative evidence. However, perfect English is not a strong positive -- the SOP may have been written or corrected by someone else.Third, do we believe that this person is strong enough academically to pass our very demanding graduate courses without a lot of drama? For this I look first at the school and the GPA, and then at transcripts to see how many relevant CS and related courses there are, and how well the applicant did in these. Recent courses count more than older ones. "Algorithms and Data Structures" counts more than "Thoughts of Chairman Mao".Evaluating academic ability is usually a quick process, but can be time-consuming if it's a school we've never heard of or if the grading system is non-standard. I also look at the GRE scores, but that carries much less weight than the grades.Again, there may be other evidence that would mitigate substandard grades or too few core CS courses. If the person has been doing projects demonstrating that he or she has a solid working knowledge in the questionable areas, that's good evidence. Sometimes a recommendation letter or the student's SOP can explain that a period of bad grades was due to sickness or personal problems, but that this is all now resolved.Fourth, and most important, what evidence is there that the person is ready to do research at an elite level? English and academic ability are check-marks -- the majority of our applicants are OK on these -- so it is research ability that really separates the successful candidates from the others.For research ability, I look at research projects described in the student's SOP and in the letters of recommendation. Are the letters from someone we know? If so, how strong is it relative to that person's typical letters.Of course, I also look at the list of publications, if any. Were there any papers accepted at top conferences or journals? First or sole author? If not, what was the student's role in this work? If the case file includes some actual publications, I may skim through these, but there is no time to read them carefully.Any observations made during the investigations outlined above go into the online evaluation form, and then I have to come up with an overall opinion, a numerical score for the person's suitability as a PhD admit, and another score for MLT admission.And then repeat this for all the other cases...Oh, and we do NOT try to remove the name and "discriminating information" from the case in an attempt to prevent any possibility of unconscious bias. I probably would resign from the committee if something like this were imposed.To be clear, I think it's very important to treat each applicant fairly, as an individual and not as a stereotypical member of some group. But I think that crude (and usually ineffective) information-hiding is a seriously misguided way to go about this. Anyway, that's a discussion for another day.

Call the Princpal and have you and your husband go in or you and another family member. I’ve done it. It did no good but you can try.As a parent in a wealthy school district where both parents often have advanced degrees, I found public school to be incredibly invasive. My son, who we didn’t know was very early onset schizophrenia was actually delayed in getting his diagnosis because the school district has a policy of never allowing teachers to fill out their half of the psych evaluation forms. We made it through Kindergarten with the first year teacher bringing in a Special Ed teacher for the December parent teacher conference. I asked why and the teacher told me my son didn’t know all his letter sounds. I started laughing and told her I didn’t know what planet she was on, but he went to three years of Montessori pre-school and knew all his letters and sounds at 3.5. In fact, he could actually READ! The teacher then proceeded to tell me “I probably ruined him” from ever learning to read correctly. I laughed and laughed, told her it wasn’t witchcraft, it was just phonics.By First Grade, (first year teacher again) they were getting much more invasive. I sent in the usual permission form saying that the school could contact son’s doctor for emergency purposes but school nurse lied and said they couldn’t find it. She sends a form home giving the school district permission to obtain my son’s medical records from his pediatrician AND any other doctor mentioned in her notes. As a doctor, there was no way I was giving them his private medical information. Why? For the same reason I wouldn’t give them my tax information. IT’S PRIVATE and none of their darn business. Son tests out for gifted program but they tell me they won’t put him in it even though they test him reading at a 5th grade level. (Remember it was me that taught him to read LOL) The final straw was the school counselor calling me on the phone and saying, “If you won’t tell me your son’s diagnosis from his psychiatric evaluation, I’m going to label him and stick him in Special School District.” I gave her my, “That’s so f ing hysterical crazy laugh” and laughed till I was in tears and gasping for air, which made her so pissed. When she demanded to know why I was laughing, I told her because I’m a doctor and that information is private, and if they wanted to participate in knowing his diagnosis, they should have filled out the form to help him be diagnosed correctly.Next day, personally took in his letter of withdrawal to homeschool him. NEVER in my life thought I’d homeschool, but schools and teachers are out of control. I don’t care what you think about how it’s your job to butt your nose in. It’s your job to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and nothing else. Turned out my children learned twice as much homeschooling as they ever would have in public school. Teachers get angry that people homeschool but every family I knew that homeschooled had horror stories about public school. The rate of homeschooling is doubling, I think it’s every seven years. My advice…Order the book, “The Well Trained Mind” from Amazon, then order the catalog from “Rainbow Resource Center” with both you can homeschool your child for an Ivy League Education and both of you will have more fun doing it. There’s a new path to Harvard and it’s not in a classroom