A speedy writeup today while I take a break from thinking about the numerous emails I have been putting off. Despite the prompt I received, I do find myself spending a surprising amount of time helping out other TAs (teaching assistants) figure out what is, and isn’t okay. Having TAed (verb) for quite some time now, I have dealt with wonderful and atrocious instructors, other TAs, and students. Here are some words of wisdom.

Top skills I used while TAing:

• Patience. Much patience has been applied. Be observant in your patience
• Time Management. TAing is a “job” insofar as it is one of the only ways to fund your research, which is likely what your supervisor and the institution consider to be your real job. Nontheless, you have hours assigned to focus on something else. Try to strike that balance
• Self-preservation. It’s good to check in with yourself. Are things okay?

Some handy strats for first-time TAs:

• Read the contract. Do it. The instructor is obliged to meet with you at some point in most contracts. You are obliged to confirm if the contract makes sense. This is a great time to mention your comfort level with the materials and if you need hours to learn the content to be successful in your other duties
• Track your hours. All your hours. If you forget to, go back and estimate each week. Meetings, emails, prep, despairing over the assignment, formatting feedback, all of it. Then forecast. Do you actually have enough hours for the rest of the term?
• Balance any need to “care” for the students, yourself, and the course. Forget the institution’s reputation and a disdain or admiration for cheaters for a moment. Will anyone appreciate the effort you’re putting in? Will you gain something from it for yourself? Spend a little bit of time figuring out what feedback actually gets used. It may be handy to compile a general list of issues rather than provide specific comments. Do not entertain one on one meetings instigated by sob stories unless the student has done a minimum to ask specific questions or have read the general feedback. The exception to this is if you have hours set aside for this task. TAs are not trained to take care of the mental health of their students nor deal with exceptional circumstances. Have a handy list of references to point them elsewhere if need be. A reference document on how to “save as pdf” is astonishingly useful. So is “how to save a file and where to find it”
• Communicate often and early. If the instructor is not accesible, then with the other TAs. Check that contract. See if it is being upheld. Count those as hours. This ties in with…
• Front loading your work. Within reason of course. Get the rubrics, read the assignments, set up your TA hour tracker, let the students know that YOU know about the myriad ways in which they can be academically dishonest, and set and enforce your boundaries early on!

For the long-term TA, you may be jaded. Or even as a first-timer, you may simply not care for this aspect of your job. There are certainly ways to optimize your true working hours and not be reviled by your earnest coworkers.

For the passionate TA who cares about academic integrity, rigor, passion, and performance from students… It will be difficult and disappointing sometimes. Being actively involved with the course progression, reading the syllabus and course goals, checking the grade distribution, skimming the assignments you didn’t mark might help you identify the pain points of the course, or what the students are underprepared for. Feel free to suggest small changes or potential improvements to the course. If something is working well in your section, mention it to the others. In the case of your coworkers not caring abotu the same things you do, you may need to argue truthfully that it will save everyone work in the next few months. Good luck.

Lastly, it is worthwhile mentioning that professional relationships are sometimes difficult to navigate. The academic sphere does not always foster teaching skills nor empathy. If you suspect something is not quite right, get a second opinion. Tenure and a different cultural background do not justify a complete lack of communication, competence, nor care.

Thoughts? For brevity’s sake, I have not included my thoughts and experiences on academia as a whole. Thus, context has been stripped from this post. Nonetheless, I suspect the general skills/strategies should still hold regardless of what kind of job it is, if human interaction is somehow involved.

Addendum: This post has predominantly been prescriptive, in the hopes that it will be intuitive as to why the strategies have been listed. However, I strongly believe that “tools, not solutions” is the best thing you can provide to students that have the time and enthusiasm to improve.