Fears and how to allay them
During section
- I have stage fright.
- Practice teaching in front of your friends, the other t.a.s or in front of the mirror. After the first section or two, this will start to subside as you get more comfortable knowing your students. Keep working on eye contact if you find yourself looking at the floor when you're teaching.
- I'll "suck".
- To find out how effective you are, ask for quick anonymous evaluations on index cards of your teaching. Guide the evaluation into topics such as
- What is ___ doing well?
- What could ___ do/change to improve?
- Additional comments for ___?
- One area to look for improvement is your preparation; this is usually the source of most problems.
- I'll be rude and/or intimidate students.
- This is a big one to watch out for. You can easily put off your students and they'll go somewhere else for a t.a. Ways to notice you're doing it: ask for anonymous feedback from the students throughout the term, video tape your section and watch it later, have another t.a. come to your section and give you feedback. Watch out for the phrases "this is intuitively obvious", "this is easy" and other condescending statements.
- Two or three people dominate discussion.
- Offline, ask those students to perhaps tone down their participation a bit. Also, ask all students to raise their hands before responding so you can pick on students who don't talk as much. It's also OK to say to the loud ones: "I'd like to give those who haven't answered a chance to speak"
- I don't know an answer.
- Admit to the students that you don't know the answer and go home and look it up. Send an email to the students the next day with the answer, post your correction to the newsgroup or bring it to the next section.
- I'll tell students something wrong.
- Don't lie, and if you don't know the answer, don't worry about saying so.
- If you inadvertently gave an incorrect answer, follow the suggestions above to correct it asap.
- They know more than I know (professional hacker in class).
- Turn the potential negative into a positive, and use them to your advantage. If things slow down or you don't know the answer to something, you can pose the question to the class.
- It depends on what they know more about. If they indeed know more about that particular part of the course, that's OK. If they seem to know more about much of the course, then perhaps you should do more preparation.
- I'll have a technical blowout.
- Preflight and test all of your code before giving it out to your students.
- Redundancy! Bring backup hardcopies of things.
- I have 30 minutes left and nothing left to say.
- This seldom happens; if it does, it means you didn't prepare enough material. It's often useful to overprepare for this very reason. In the worst case, and you've asked if there are any more questions, it's not unheard of to let them out early.
- People heckle me.
- Remember that you're in charge. You can tell them that is not appropriate, and even ask them to leave if it gets too inappropriate. It's highly suggested to take the discussion offline; speak to them afterwards and talk about why they are being rude. Speak to your professor to figure out how best to handle the particular situation.
Preparation
- I'm unprepared.
- See the preparation suggestions below.
- I won't understand the system.
- You'll pick this up pretty fast. When in doubt, ask your students. They've probably been at Berkeley longer than you.
General
- Students {won't come to, will drop my} section.
- If this bothers you enough, improve! Take evaluations and figure out what is needed.
- Students won't find my answers helpful.
- Find out what your students need help on before you start giving them answers.
- Let them drive the discussion with their questions; try to say as little as possible.
- I'm too helpful, my students won't leave me alone.
- Set boundaries. Don't let them call you at home or outside of appropriate hours. Learn to say no. If it gets to be too much, talk to the students and tell them you can't be as available as before.
- Students hate or don't respect me; I lose credibility.
- They won't hate you if you show that you care about them. They might legitimately hate the lecture, the class, or the way you run section. In this case, try to engage the students through alternative means: office hours, personal one-on-one instruction, extra projects. Find out why they don't like it and make constructive changes.
- I can't get excited about the subject.
- Hmm, this one's tough. If it's because you're tired, get some sleep the night before a section. Else, pretend to like the material, or find personal links that might make it more interesting to you. Students can easily pick up on a lack of enthuiasm and quickly will be jaded about the material as well, even though it may be undeserved.
- I can't find time to do research.
- Time Management! We'll talk about time management later on in the course.
- We'll screw up someone's grade.
- See your instructor for policies about regrades. You're fortunate in that you can always pass the buck to your instructor.
- My students will cheat.
- Talk to your instructor about any cheating that you see, and he or she will deal with it.
- I want to date one of my students.
- Sorry, no can do. You're going to have to wait until the class is over to embark on any relationships other than professional.
- I think the instructor is doing a bad job, and I have to re-teach everything.
- Don't badmouth the instructor to the class, that's rule #1.
- Share your concerns about it with the instructor if it appears to be chronic.
Preparation suggestions
- Stay a week ahead.
- Set aside a period of time every week where you work on nothing but the course.
- Work with another t.a. to co-prepare for the week.
- Have a buddy t.a. (which gives you twice the preparation time).
- Solicit questions ahead of time.
- Ask other t.a.s and profs for help.
- Practice lecturing.
- Be awake for class.
- Make personal connections to the material.
- Declare boundaries when you are TAing and when you are not. Make sure your students respect them.
- Think of stupid jokes to use in class.
- Videotape your sections so you can figure out what to do differently next time.
- Develop a lesson plan. Your elementary school teachers did it—you can do it too.