Welcome to Issue 19.1 of Xchanges!

This time last year, I was nearing the end of my final class as a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI). My experiences as a GSI, which spanned across two institutions in two degree programs over 15 years, were formative to my development as a scholar and thinker. It was my time as a GSI that led me down an entire career path. These times were also riddled with questions of legitimacy, issues of labor and pay, and endless anxiety. Anyone who does now or has occupied this role knows that to be both a student and a teacher is a position of liminality that comes with unique insight into the classroom. It was from this vantage that we developed the call for Xchanges’s Graduate Teaching Symposium.

The editorial team at Xchanges wondered about the current state of Graduate Student Teaching, noting a tumultuous and decidedly anti-intellectual political landscape taking hold, the leftover and continued fatigue from the Covid-19 pandemic, and a series of geopolitical atrocities as our backdrop. Our call was well received by current GSIs; nearly 40 proposals were submitted, from students representing 25 graduate degree programs covering a broad range of issues including GSI labor, emotional well being, identity formation, use of technology, pedagogical support and development, and more.

The overwhelming interest and diversity of viewpoints from GSIs has driven us to create two issue releases from this call. In this first issue, we are excited to include 10 different pieces from 17 different graduate student authors. These authors have engaged in a range of important and timely questions about the state of graduate teaching, highlighting the urgent need to address systemic issues while celebrating innovative approaches to teaching and professional development and reminding us of the endless creation and invention that GSIs offer.

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