`The top five things I know now about teaching that I wish I had known at the beginning of the semester.''
1.Prepare! (Plan your discussion, time it etc.)
2.Attitude / enthusiasm while lecturing (be confident etc.)
3.Plan for emergencies (esp. in lab)
4.Have a grading rubric
5.Coming up with good discussion problems
1.Evaluate the time required for GSI responsibilities, and if it is
too much, confront the professor to ease the burden. Teaching will be
time consuming, but it should not take all of your time.
2.For lab sections, run through the lab before the students. It is
usually informative, and will go a long way to having smoother lab
sections.
3.Preparing lectures for discussion sections takes longer than you
think. Allow enough time and try to anticipate difficult topics and
time constraints. If possible, plan early in the semester to ease the
load when your workload increases throughout the semester.
4.Know how to find the lab tech in case you run into equipment issues
during lab. A bad connection or scope could cost an entire lab
section. Some problems are unavoidable, but some can be easily
fixed. This is more important early on when learning where things are
and how labs run.
5.Along the lines of #1, try to have a grader for the course. Even
having 20 homeworks to grade each week can turn into a significant
time commitment. If there is too much grading to do, a grader is a
nice way to split tasks.
From Vinay Raj Hampapur:
Being a Teaching Assistant (TA) is an art; an art form that has scope
and opportunity for plenty of refinement. As such, when you first
become a TA, it is quite natural to feel awkward; youll be required to
fulfill dual roles as students as well as teachers. But this is
nothing to be intimidated of; in fact, with the right access to
resources on your part, you can smoothen and even enjoy being a
TA. First and foremost, know your colleagues and the professor for
whom you will be TAing. Having an open channel of communication with
those you work with will serve you well in times of need including
requests for someone to cover for you during illness, an academic
problem you are unsure how to resolve and so on. Secondly, never lose
composure even when youre faced with a problem you are unsure how to
solve. This intimidation particularly tends to happen when you are
facing a large body of students. Take a deep breath and promise your
students to provide the solution and make sure you follow through.
Lastly, do not over stretch yourself to your students. Make sure that
you attain a balance where neither your own education nor your
efficiency as a TA is compromised. Be absolutely sure to clear the
central concepts for your students; but, do not bring it upon yourself
to show your students how every problem or variant of it is
solved. Furthermore, be absolutely certain to motivate and inspire
your students; it is your job to show them the beauty of the subject
you teach and make sure that they can fully appreciate that
beauty. And, on a final note, always let your demeanor show that you
are there for them; students appreciate having a TA who knows what
they are going through.
Good Luck and all the best!!
From another EE301 student, Fall 08:
Stay organized
triple check grade entry, and keep prior versions from each edit
learn your students names (the sooner the better)