The value of your being a TA for

The value of your being a TA: for you and the students Julie E. Buring, Sc. D January 22, 2018

Why valuable for you? Gaining a skill set • Reason 1 : Will hone your communication skills. Need for qualifying exams, thesis, seminars, career. • Never truly understand material until you can teach it. Cements knowledge; skill to be able to break something down into its parts, communicate at the appropriate level of your audience, think on your feet to develop numerous examples addressing an issue. • Often to heterogeneous groups, including those without background or any understanding of field (colleagues in other fields, media, public). • Whether your career will involve formal teaching or not - whether career is academics, industry, government - effective communication crucial.

Why valuable for you? Teaching as part of career • Reason 2: If you think you even possibly will want or need teaching to be a part of your career, then this is right way to start. • Can experiment with explaining new ways, flexible, develop more examples, think on feet, learning to say I don’t know (find answer and back to student). No-one looking over shoulder. • Safe (backup Head TA, TAs, faculty), small size, lots of time. Will be issues – difficult seminar group, unorganized professor – but will have each other. • Jump-started my love of teaching and inclusion in career.

Why valuable for you? Enhance CV • Reason 3 : Will enhance CV, and thus applications (postdoc, position, career development awards, etc) • Keep comments from course evaluations– use them in your letters of application, and show to recommenders to use if needed. Ask for a letter from the course instructor for whom you TA’d. • Include in CV every skill set: breadth of forms of teaching experiences (flipped, integrated, online, hybrid); ran seminars, leadership as head TA, wrote exam questions or exercises or seminars, any lectures you gave.

Why TAs valuable for a course? • Teach in limited time blocks. Especially for big course, no time for them to ask questions, can’t learn names. • TAs, seminar groups critical to course – ask anything, no matter how small, specific questions about own work; safe environment, know them individually. • TAs critical to course director – first alert to pulse of class, problem areas, speed, etc • Evaluations always refer to “Dr Buring and TAs” – without good TAs, class will never succeed. • Faculty members know this; thank their TAs every day.

What students most appreciate about TAs Comments from the evaluations … • First and foremost, well prepared, augmented what course covered • Answered questions clearly and simply, could approach different ways • Involved whole class, facilitated discussion • Approachable, patient, respectful, brought snacks • “More than simply showing up and running through the exercises in the lab session, the TA engaged the class, made the material interactive, and did not leave anyone out. ”

What students least appreciated about TAs • Was not well prepared so could not facilitate discussion: did not read in depth, know where all pieces of information are located, verified calculations; anticipated possible questions and problems. DO NOT WING IT. • Was not aware of the context of the class, what exactly was covered before seminar: used different terminology, answered with information beyond the specific class; could not answer questions in simpler terms; had not attended class or watched videos or gone over slides. THIS IS KEY TO DO. • Could not keep session on course; could not redirect class if one person is causing problems for the group.

Bottom line… • Serving as a TA – and learning to communicate well to heterogeneous groups - will be of immense value throughout your career…whatever you choose for your career. • You will never regret doing this!