I will soon start teaching introductory foreign language, as my university deems me fit to do so despite my lack of pedagogical experience. So…I’m looking for some guidelines. If you had a crappy TA in college, what made them bad? If you had a quality one, what did they do? Or should I just resort to bribing them with chocolate? much appreciated…
Crappy TAs that I have had attempted to lord their “power” over the students, did not take it well when they were proven to be giving out incorrect information, and would be rigid and demand that the student do it their way or it was wrong.
Pizza works much better than chocolate.
Anyway, I did have a few crappy TAs, but more recently, I just finished a two-year stint volunteer teaching some introductory psychology classes. I wasn’t the greatest TA ever, but I do think I was better than average. At any rate, I think I’m qualified to give you advice. 
The bad TAs basically just go through the motions of teaching. They don’t do as much as they could for their students. They go through their lesson plans with little enthusiasm or variety. They rarely explain things well or thoroughly enough. And the only time they ever make themselves available to their students is in the 50 minutes or so of class. Their classes are boring, and no one’s happy.
I tried to be a good TA for my students. I made a course syllabus with all the class rules and grading policies on it. I made a class web page that had basic class info and special announcements and reminders. I collected their e-mail addresses in case I had to get in touch with them. These were things I didn’t have to do (only one other TA had a syllabus and no one else had a web page) but I did anyway because they made life easier for my students. In the long run, it made life easier for me too, as I didn’t have to keep repeating the same info or stress over not being able to contact them.
I tried to make my lectures interesting. I gave lots of examples, and if I felt that the lesson plan wasn’t detailed enough, I provided the details. I looked up info if I wasn’t clear on something. I thought about what concepts confused me when I was in intro psych and I made sure I was explaining things so that they wouldn’t be confused. I made jokes, and tried to keep the atmosphere light and casual. I also made myself available to my students via e-mail and was always prompt to reply.
I’m not posting all this stuff because I think you should do these kinds of things, or because I want to tell the world what a fine TA I was. I guess these are just examples of the things I did because I wished my own TAs had done them for me. In classes I had that were led by bad TAs, the feeling among myself and my classmates was that some TAs either forgot what it’s like to be an undergraduate, or they just didn’t care. I didn’t want to be perceived that way.
Okay, I’ll shut up now. Good luck with your classes, aurelian.
Lots of TAs that I’ve had always tended to either dumb things down too much (which came across as condescending) or go into too much specialised detail (which just confused us). Once we literally had a 20 minute response when a single sentence would have done. :eek:
We were never bribed with chocolate - but I’m sure it would’ve been appreciated. (Although I’d be careful depending on the age of people you’re teaching)
Reaching way back into memory, I recall 2 abominable TAs - one had a poor command of English, so to make himself understood, he yelled… I don’t know how well he knew his stuff, since it was freshman Chem, and I hated that I had to take that class.
The other taught 2nd semester German. She managed to make me hate German. Her accent was marginal, and her attitude was beyond condescending. After having a native speaker for first semester, it was doubly aggravating. And to think I was taking the class for fun and for an easy A. Stupid bitch…
My general advice to all aspiring TAs - you’re there to teach, not to impress the undergrads with your knowledge. Share your love of the subject, but remember the level of your students. Be prepared. Don’t be an ass.
hmmmm - that advice could be given to all instructors everywhere…
The worst TA I ever had was in a Physics class and he had no concept of what the “T” stood for. The man couldn’t have taught fish to swim. Remember that you’re there to teach, not to repeat the lecture word for word.
The best TA I ever had was in a geology class, and she obviously loved what she was doing. She had energy and knew what she was talking about backward and forward.
She was also absolutely positively HOT. Jenna, wherever you are…yowza. But I digress…
Anyway, my advice would be to know your stuff and be able to explain it in plain english to students who have probably been completely confused by the prof.
Just to clarify, I will not be working in conjunction with a professor’s lecture; I give all the classes on my own (eek!)
Speaking as a TA, let me just say: prep time is your friend. It sounds obvious, but it’s suprisingly easy to think “I know what I’m talking about, I’ll skimp on my preparation time”, and then you get in there and you can’t remember the antiderivative of arcsin, or how to conjugate “sein” in the past tense, or whatever, and then you spend ten minutes going “ummm” and looking stupid as you try to remember. Don’t skimp on your prep time!
Speaking as a student, one thing that’s bugged me about other TA’s is when they don’t plan out their lecture well enough and go ten or fifteen minutes overtime because they “just want to finish this one thought”, and meanwhile you have another lecture to go to on the other side of campus. Or when they never answer questions because they never actually look at their students.