TAs, grad students, teachers: reassure me!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

As you may (unlikely) recall, I applied to grad school for next year. Lo and behold, I was accepted, and will be attending Penn State with a Graduate Assistantship, which involves TAing.

Now, TAs have always been wise, old, figures of authority. And if they went drinking with me and said stupid things, I still knew deep down they were wise, for they had the power to give me grades.

But now I’m going to be a TA! How in the world can I handle this responsibility? I will be holding in my palm the lives and grades of 70-90 undergrads per semester. I am in no way wise and old enough to do this. Will they see straight through me, and discover the sham?

More seriously, I’m sure everyone goes through this, but I’d love to hear that I really do/will have enough experience and knowledge (at least compared to my students) as well as guidance from the teacher for it not to be a terrible experience.

2

Be reassured – the motto here is “fake it 'til you make it”:

Dress well to give yourself some authority (if you’re a woman, particularly a younger-looking woman, avoid dressing like a hoochie.)

Use powerful body language – stand up straight, look students in the eye, etc

Speak confidently to students and acknowledge when you’re uncertain of
an answer (“that’s interesting, I’ll look that up”)

Be organized or at least fake being organized. Return papers and assignments on the date you promised (or before – a great way to earn evaluation points!)

Don’t ever tell your students “wow! this is the first time I’ve ever taught!”

Avoid entangling situations with students, including the one you cite in your post (drinking with students.) Don’t sleep with your students or form other relationships while they are your students that will impede your ability to grade fairly.

Take other teacher’s “war stories” with a grain of salt: 99.9% of students are smart, respectful people who won’t give you any trouble.

If you do have disruptive classroom behavior, address it immediately before it grows bigger.

Don’t equate good teaching with being liked. This doesn’t mean that you should be a humorless hardass, but you have to reinforce your boundaries and policies and this can result in students not being charmed by you and that’s okay. Ultimately, students respect teachers who expect a lot from them and won’t be pushed around.

3

Jennshark gives good advice.

I was a TA longer than I care to remember (about 8 years total during MA and PhD programs). One of the things my first adviser told us (he had a whole list of tips) was: don’t be sarcastic. Of course, I started TAing when I was in a particularly sarcastic phase. I had a couple of experiences (more embarrassing than traumatic) that showed me that he was right on with the advice. It’s amazing how much easier it is for people to misread sarcasm when you’re in a group setting.

LaurAnge, what subject will you be teaching? It might help people give you more specific advice if they knew.

Oh, and yes, you’ll be able to pull it off. I used to get REALLY nervous, shaky, etc speaking in public. Less than a week of teaching cured me of that one. For a while my voice would shake at the beginning of the first class of the quarter. I now do a fair amount of public speaking in my job, and it’s EXTREMELY rare for me to be visibly nervous.

Good luck!

GT

4

Give up on the idea that the malevolent little slackers are going to learn anything. If you leave a loophole, they’ll take it.

5

“I don’t know but I’ll find out” is okay as long as you don’t have to use it too often.

There is no money in enemies for TA’s. Do not provoke the kids.

Observe other TA’s teaching your course and borrow their good stuff.

Invite another TA to observe your class for constructive criticism.

Project confidence!

Realise that most of the kids couldn’t care less about what you have to say and are just trying to get by with a decent grade with minimal effort.

If things ever get out of hand, call time-out, loudly.

Do not get emotionally or relationally attached to any of the charges.

Grade fairly, toughly, as objectively as possible and consistently.

It’s okay to be a bit more laid back during office hours, but not too much.

Don’t try to make friends with them or act their age.

No dead air. Make sure you fill the time and are extra organised. Over-prepare the first time for about three times as much time as time you have in class. Make time for questions and question them for understanding. Tell them what you are going to say, say it (with numerous relevant examples) and then tell them what you told them. Repeat for the next point, etc. They’re not going to catch it the first time.

Respect the kids, their questions and ideas without necessarily agreeing with them all the time. (Don’t ever be a jerk.)

Never let a kid hi-jack your class. Know what it takes to steer class back on topic.

Don’t be afraid to take a troublemaker aside after class and have a little talk in private.

Know your stuff

Know your stuff

Know your stuff

Have good notes

Should something bad ever happen, get your story straight and try to find corroborating witnesses

If you ever get in trouble with the kids and it goes to the administration, find out what they think you did wrong, cooperate and address their issues.

6

God, I remember my first day TAing. Very scary. It does get easier. I remember being incredibly shy and nervous, and eventually I turned into an authoritative loudmouth-- you can get there, too. Also, you’ll soon find that it’s much easier to talk to students than to give a conference paper-- authority and heirarchy issues. They know the game and will generally go along with it.
Remember rule #1 and keep it in the back of your head: “I don’t know much, but I know more than you do!” Corollary #1: you only have to stay a week ahead of them, and say it like you mean it.
There’s a difference between you and them. They won’t see through the sham. You are at least 22, probably. To them, you are ancient.
There will be a couple of students that no matter how much you want to be liked will depise you. Don’t sweat it. There will be a couple of students who, no matter how hard you try to teach the class, will be abject failures. One of these will be a sloth. The other will work very hard and just not get it-- that one will make you sad. There will be the friendly one who is a plagiarist. That will make you sad, too. Then there will be the 60 students you don’t notice very much-- the boys are Mike and the girls are all Jen. They wear sweatshirts and ball caps and are nice kids and this isn’t their major. They’ll do ok and occasionally shine for a moment and that will make you happy. Then there are the 3 students who are awake and interested and clever and aware and even speak up in the 8 AM Friday section. You will love them. One student will thank you as they leave the room-- this will make it worth it.

7

I’ll probably be TAing again next year. I look forward to it. It seems to me that if you don’t like teaching something in your discipline, you don’t really like your discipline. Personally, I really like what I do, and I like to teach it to others. Plus, the feeling of seeing comprehension dawn on someone’s face and knowing that it’s because of you is awesome.

The first class I TA’d I knew (close to) nothing about. No worries - undergrads generally know less than nothing. What I mean is, you already have training in your field. You know where to find information and how it fits in the larger picture. So long as you don’t claim knowledge that you don’t have and prepare adequately before class, you’ll do fine.

One piece of advice I’d give - make sure to make everything (as concerns the course/assignments requirements) crystal clear, especially on grading. I was amazed at how tenaciously some students would argue their grades. If necessary – and I found it necessary at least once per semester – defer authority to the professor on grading policy (or whatever the proper channels are).

8

Please see my post in the “student tries to intimidate me” thread in the pit, wherein I state that “undergraduates are idiots.”

They’ll believe whatever you tell them.

9

I remember the very first time I walked into a classroom as a TA. To be honest, my knees were knocking and I’m sure that my voice wavered. But I got over it, and slowly gained confidence as the semester went on. The key is to be yourself, don’t get defensive about anything, and always act confident (without being arrogant) in front of the students. Yes, you gotta know your stuff; otherwise, you can lose your students’ confidence fast. But if you really don’t know how to answer some question, just admit it and say you’ll look into it. So I spent a lot of time preparing my talk for each of my 50-minute sessions, with some of the time working on answers to previously unanswered questions.

I must say that the most gratifying moment for me in that first semester as a TA was at the end of the semester. The students applauded me. It’s customary for the professors to get applause at the end of the last lecture, but applause for a TA?! Not that common where I went to school.

Oh yes, another bit of advice. Don’t let your newfound authority go to your head. Yeah, you can give out grades that will go on the students’ permanent record, but so what? Finally, one of the best advice I got was from an older grad student after my first year. At that time, he saw that I was spending a lot of time on my TA work and getting a kick out of it. He reminded me that I was in school to get my degree, and that TA’ing was a means to that end. That is, I wasn’t there for my TA work. I was there to complete my degree, so I should have my priorities straight. He was right.

10

Prepare well before you go into the classroom, every single day. Consider using overhead slides, power point, or other materials, to take some of the load off.

Think about your favorite/most effective teachers and professors. Think about what techniques they used, and adopt those techniques.

Know the material well, so that you won’t have to consult your notes during class. That’s a no-no. Ideally you should be able to field questions from the students without having to look in the book.

Think up ways to get the students involved. After a lecture has gone on for some length of time, they will start to nod off. This is human nature. Fight back by asking them questions, arranging group activities.

Use humor when you can, but make sure that it’s actually funny. Nothing is worse than a joke that fails.

Hand out candy. This will make your students love you, and it always works.

Know what sort of support and assistance options your department has, and what the university has. Now who you can go to for help *before * the semester starts.

Don’t worry, because you’re going to do fine.
I taught my first class at the start of this month, and despite being incredibly nervous it went very well. A student came up afterwards and asked me further questions about one of my examples, which was very gratifying. Teaching is a tough career mentally, but also a very rewarding one.

11

I won’t be teaching per se, but I’ll be grading and I’ll be leading discussion sections. Thank goodness I don’t yet need to lecture.

Some great advice here, though. Thanks to all of you.

And, just to clarify, I wasn’t really hanging out with my TAs, I was hanging out with people in my classes who were TAs to other classes.