--- You wrote: 5) Focus Also on Careers Two ideas we had here concern career-minded TAs. One idea we had was to contact former graduate students who have now gone onto academic jobs and ask them to share about the role of teaching in their current careers. Sharing these "testimonies" with the current TAs in some way might help them see the value of spending time developing their teaching skills. Also, we thought we might add some teaching-related career-oriented topics, such as writing teaching philosophy statements and building teaching portfolios. --- end of quote --- These are very good, because they hit the TA's where they are going to live. My memory is that you have a teaching evaluation system that applies to the graduate students. You can use it to motivate students to participate. We have one that we use for everyone who teaches, and though it is voluntary for senior faculty, most participate most of the time. Early on in our seminar, if I am involved in it, I mention to graduate students that the vast majority of our graduate students get overall teaching ratings higher than the department average. (This isn't a Lake Woebegone phenomenon; our visitors, postdocs, and most regular faculty are in those averages.) In the most understated way I can, I point out how easy it is for the writer to a teaching letter to say "So and So's average on the "overall how do you rate this teacher" question is 4.25 on a 1 to 5 scale with 5 being the best, while the department average is about 4.1," and mention the impact that has on someone's chances for a job interview at a liberal arts college or a university where teaching is the main faculty function. I don't want to push the idea too hard, because I have seen very good teachers with below average ratings. But everything you can do to positively link your seminar with students' job opportunities later in life is likely to have an impact on their commitment to the seminar.