2024 Autumn · TA Panel
Reuses the 2024 Spring "Efficiency tips and common traps for TA work." The opening emphasizes the meaning of TA work/training: a good TA experience brings a sense of achievement, possibilities, and less loneliness; but it can also bring fatigue, mistakes, and psychological stress. So the primary goal of training is to make TAs' own work experience more positive, not just to help teachers and students.
The five common traps for new TAs are discussed (from interviews with experienced TAs):
- Working by feeling / passion without clear basis, division of labor, and planning — need written materials (syllabus/announcements), division of labor among TAs and with teachers, and a plan for when TA work must be done.
- Not completing the identity change from student to TA — every sentence represents the teaching team; as a student you can complain, as a TA you cannot.
- Assuming students are like yourself, or treating people as machines — don't communicate in your own clique style, don't say "RTFM" to students; people aren't machines, apologize when wrong, reduce ambiguity.
- Always replying to students promptly — analogous to memory hierarchy, TA tutoring should be positioned at "lower availability + higher quality"; for course-management questions, check the documents first and reach consensus with teachers/other TAs.
- Needing to satisfy every student request — only aim to satisfy most students' reasonable requests; if you accept a special case, ensure fairness and publish the late-submission point rule.
This semester gifts new TAs with Nonviolent Communication.