UpDate - Vol. 14, No. 4, Page 6
September 22, 1994
TA training conference prepares new teachers

     By this time of the semester, most new teaching assistants (TA's)
have already jumped that first great hurdle of their careers: walking
into a class for the first time, not as a student, but as a teacher.
It can be challenging, exciting, or overwhelming, or all of the above.
     Hoping to ease graduate students into this new role, the Center
for Teaching Effectiveness in late August sponsored a two-day
conference where students participated in a variety of sessions
dealing with issues faced by new teachers.
     "With any new experience comes some anxiety," said Judith Greene,
director of the center. "We respond to initial fears, helping TA's in
the long run to communicate well with their students and their
supervising professors."
     The conference began as a three-hour seminar in 1978, expanding
to its current format several years ago. A survey of last year's
participants revealed that about 95 percent of respondents found the
event "very effective."
     "Our purpose is to help teachers get off on the right foot,"
Greene said. "Experienced TA's give them a feel for what to expect,
and because they're meeting people who've done it, new teachers get a
sense of the real world of teaching, what it's like to be a TA."
     At the conference, experienced teaching assistants, along with
faculty, conducted sessions on such issues as stimulating discussion,
assigning and evaluating students' writing and dealing with common
classroom problems. Sessions such as "TA Survival Skils" and "Stay
Sane as a Graduate Student" offered tips on how to balance teaching
duties with course work and social life.
     Sessions were designed to accomodate the different backgrounds of
the TA's, including age, gender and country of origin.
     Shannon Wilson, a second-year English master's candidate, helped
conduct the session on issues facing young TA's. "Earning the respect
of students roughly the same age as you can get frustrating," Wilson
said.
     Using their own experiences, she and panelists Gillian Ashley and
Michele Shauf addressed how age and gender of a TA can affect how
students conduct themselves in class.
     The conference also serves an important social function as well,
as new math TA's Jen Bittner, Lauren Goggins and Catherine Purdy
agreed. "We don't feel quite so lost," Goggins said.
     The social aspect of the conference was originally a side-effect,
Greene explained, but is now part of the design. "Each day, TA's eat
lunch with each other, giving them time to talk about the sessions,
get better acquainted and to exchange phone numbers. It's one of the
few opportunities graduate students get to meet students from other
departments."
     A central event of the conference, as it has been for four years,
is a speech, "And Gladly Teach," by Jim Soles, Alumni Distinguished
Professor of political science and international relations.
     Greene said Soles addresses the "heart and soul of teaching."
Students from past conferences have rated his presentation as the most
inspiring, she said, because "he covers the heart of teaching as much
as the cognitive."
                                                     -Christ Keirstead