V. Specific TA Concerns

Expectations-On Both Sides

Although the term "teaching assistant" denotes an "assisting" role, you may or may not find yourself assisting a faculty member. Still, as a TA you are expected to perform certain functions, and you can expect the supervising faculty member to carry out certain responsibilities as well. Some of these are detailed below, and others are described in "Sharing Teaching."

Teaching

Because you usually teach students in relatively small classes, you can influence them immensely. According to statistics from the U.Va. Office of Institutional Assessment and Studies, in fall 1998 graduate students taught a great deal:

19% of the lecture courses
31% of the seminars
33% of the lab courses
87% of the discussion sections
41% of classes overall

Of course, these statistics do not take into account the enormous impact of graduate students as graders, the people who read and score thousands of problem sets, essays, and lab reports. Moreover, as TAs, you often teach essential introductory courses where students decide whether they want to learn more about your discipline and where they learn the basic information necessary for continued study. An undergraduate education is the end of formal schooling for most American college students; thus what and how you teach is basic to American society.

No matter what type of teaching or grading you do, remember that you educate undergraduate students by what you know, how you act, and how you encourage them to think and learn. Those who might say, "TAs are only in charge of lab courses (or do grading, tutoring, etc.); they don't really teach," define teaching too narrowly. Discussions, well taught, not only help solidify students' knowledge but also teach critical thinking skills. Labs teach in hands-on, real-world ways. Drill sections teach students to use the material they're learning. Good comments on students' written papers teach clarity of thought, help writers develop a sophisticated style, and can make or break students' desire to improve. You instruct students in whatever TA task you're assigned.

I valued my first teaching because of what the teaching taught me about how to learn, what to learn, about the complexity of the discipline, and indeed about the possibilities of serious scholarship within the discipline.

—John T. Casteen, III, President, U.Va.

Making Connections in Your Department

Normally, you will find out about your specific TA duties from one or more designated faculty members in your department, whether a supervisor of all TAs or the faculty member you assist with a course. If you have questions about procedures in your department and have no assigned faculty supervisor, check with your departmental chair or graduate advisor. After you have some experience with a course, you might like to have more say in how it's organized. If so, ask; many faculty members appreciate the fresh ideas you can bring and the give-and-take of collaboration. Here are the ways various types of TA assignments are normally supervised (see also "Sharing Teaching"):

• If you are teaching one or more sections (often a discussion or lab) related to a central course taught by a professor, that faculty member should supervise and coordinate your efforts. Make certain that you meet regularly with the faculty member and other course TAs; shared talk about teaching is one of the best ways to widen your knowledge and your repertoire of techniques.
  
  
• If you are teaching your own section of a multi-section course (as in foreign language courses and some lab courses), a faculty member should serve as course supervisor, making sure that sections are comparable to each other with respect to content, pace, and grading. Be sure you know these course policies and follow them for the sake of fairness to the students and your colleagues.
  
  
• If several TAs are teaching a multi-section course, the faculty member may designate a "head TA" who takes on basic administrative tasks. Performing such extra duties gives you valuable administrative experience.
  
  
• If you are teaching your own course, as you may when you advance in some departments, consult with faculty members who have previously taught the course to be sure that you have the correct focus and requirements. If possible, observe an experienced instructor's version of the course either before or during the semester you teach to pick up valuable techniques. You may be responsible for ordering your own books, equipment, etc.; check on this important detail well ahead of time (see "Preparing a Course").
  
  
• If you are a grader, make sure you understand the course instructor's standards and concerns. If possible, attend at least a few course meetings to see how the course is taught and to know the student population a bit. Although you need not know individuals to grade their papers, you do need a sense of what you can generally expect from students at this level. If the faculty member does not offer to grade initial papers with you, request this training. By grading a few papers independently, including comments and scores, and then comparing your reactions, you learn what the instructor expects students to learn from the course and how the instructor grades.

Mentoring

If we look at a teaching assistantship as an apprenticeship, we cannot ignore its corollary, mentoring. Your teaching and grading are usually linked with faculty-taught courses, and graduate faculty members in your department no doubt consider themselves mentors to you as future scholars. And you can equally benefit from their expertise as mentoring teachers. Find out how your professor approaches class topics. Ask how a particularly successful discussion was organized. Use regular meetings with the professor to gain insights into how the course was prepared and into the philosophy behind teaching your particular discipline. Of course, the faculty member will not always consciously know why one class meeting was especially fruitful and another less so. But, by analyzing and discussing the teaching you see, you can rapidly progress as an instructor in your own right.

Often TAs develop approaches very different from mine; I encourage them to do whatever their particular interests lead them to do as long as the discussion is not peripheral to the understanding of the text and the students' needs.

—Arthur Kirsch, English