by Rita Saerens
The Department of Mathematics employs approximately 180 Graduate Teaching Assistants (aka TAs) to teach its 100- and 200-level courses. Every fall, roughly a third of these TAs are new to teaching in our Department. Deciding which assignment is best for each of them and getting them ready to meet their classes on the first day is no small task.
The training of new TAs actually begins a few months before new graduate students arrive at Purdue, when they receive in the mail a Manual for Teaching Assistants in Mathematics. The "TA Manual" introduces them to various mathematics courses, rules and regulations of their employment, and also contains information and guidelines about teaching.
Orientation week--the week before the fall semester begins--picks up where the TA Manual leaves off; it is nearly exclusively devoted to preparing new TAs for their teaching duties through micro-teaching sessions and interactive workshops.
Micro-teaching sessions conducted on Tuesday of orientation week mimic a typical freshman recitation session. Each TA presents a solution of an assigned calculus problem to a group of peers and to faculty and senior TA screeners, who frequently interrupt with questions. The screeners evaluate the TA's teaching ability, communication skills, and command of the English language. These evaluations are used to make hiring decisions and initial teaching assignments. TAs who are found not to be ready to interact successfully with students are not hired or are given a grading assignment (and are required to participate in orientation week the following year). TAs who perform extremely well on all categories and who have teaching experience might start out teaching algebra-trigonometry. Most TAs, however, begin by conducting recitation sessions in our calculus courses. The micro-teaching sessions are videotaped and then reviewed and critiqued by the participants and senior TA screeners the next day.
On Wednesday and Thursday, new TAs spend approximately twelve hours attending workshops on topics such as conducting recitation sessions, increasing student participation in class, dealing with problems in the classroom, writing quizzes, and grading. Most of these workshops have an interactive component, with students working in smaller groups on concrete situations that TAs encounter when teaching freshmen. International TAs also attend a workshop on cultural differences in the classroom presented by the Center for Instructional Services.
Orientation week ends with course organizational meetings in which new and returning TAs meet the faculty and coordinators of the particular courses they are assigned to teach that semester. Course policies and structures for that semester are discussed.
The training of TAs (new and returning) does not end when classes begin in the fall.
Additional oppurtunities for the professional development of TAs, such as a semester-long seminar on developing a course, are in the works.