TA in a day: Penn's quick training

Imagine dead silence. You walk into a recitation of 20 undergraduates, who all expect you to know exactly what you are doing. You ask your first question, and all you receive in response is 20 blank stares. This, unfortunately, is the reality for some of Penn's own teaching assistants. Teaching assistants are often the crucial link between undergraduates and faculty -- and undergraduates rely on these graduate students to clarify both the course material and the expectations of the professor. But for some teaching assistants, when they step into the first recitation, their only training is a one-day crash course designed to cover all aspects of teaching at Penn. "It's a one-day super-intensive introduction into everything -- and then they let us loose," said history teaching assistant Carin Muskiet, a School of Arts and Sciences doctoral student. Beyond the mandatory session required for School of Arts and Sciences teaching assistants, departments may choose to implement further training and evaluation, but are not required to do so. There are currently around 700 graduate employees of the University, which include both research assistants and teaching assistants. And for the hundreds of TAs, the impact of training has an inconsistent effect on their classroom habits. "I might have gotten a couple of tips here and there from the training process, but it's not preparation per se," said Brandy O'Neil, a SAS doctoral student and anthropology teaching assistant. "Any success that I had in the classroom was by trial and error and by my own personality." However, despite any insufficiencies in training TAs, assistant teaching is only going to become a greater part of graduate education, according to Director of SAS Graduate Studies Joseph Farrell. Farrell said assistant teaching will become a requirement in more graduate departments than today, as only about 50 percent of departments currently mandate assistant teaching. And assistant teaching may potentially become a requirement for all departments. Farrell added that the new emphasis on assistant teaching will discourage teaching by first year graduate students. The SAS training program at the start of each fall semester is is the only formal and required session. Graduate students receive a handbook that covers general University policies, and then choose to attend a few workshops -- such as one on grading in the humanities or one on teaching with technology -- that seem relevant to their department. "The teaching assistant training program is really designed to get people ready to walk into the classroom two days later," SAS Associate Director for Academic Affairs Eric Schneider said. "We do as much as we can in a day. to get people prepped for the responsibilities they are going to have." "No teaching assistant training program for all of Arts and Sciences can teach a TA to be a better historian or a better biologist," he added. "What they can do is direct a graduate student's attention to how to organize your class and your syllabus, and what are good questions to ask in leading discussions." But some teaching assistants said the formal training they received had no substantial effect on their teaching. "There's almost no training," O'Neil said. "The School of Arts and Sciences has a day of training that you go through. It's very minimal preparation for such an important job." And others said the most important things they learned didn't come from the University's formal training. "The training is mostly informal," said history teaching assistant Amy Gadsden, a SAS doctoral student. "In the History Department we work very closely with the faculty in terms of helping us develop our teaching skills." Even though some departments do provide intensive training for teaching assistants, the impetus for creating such programs comes from within the department -- not the University. Some of the strongest departmental training programs, like that in the Chemistry Department, last as long as a week, according to Eric Schneider. "[But] there are several other programs where you get a pat on the back and a wish of good luck," Schneider said. "Our department is possibly unique in that all of our elementary and intermediate level courses are fully in the hands of teaching assistants or instructors, so we really do feel that we have to give them as much training as possible," Language Program Director for French and Italian Kate McMahon said. First time language teachers meet weekly with course coordinators, who oversee all teaching assistants, and are observed four or five times in their first semester. In addition to attending a training orientation, they meet weekly with the course coordinator and take a class in the theory of language acquisition. Within the Chemistry Department, a similarly intensive training program is in place. In order to avoid the nightmare of a TA who doesn't speak English, foreign graduate students must be certified in English over the summer. And all chemistry teaching assistants learn about issues ranging from cheating to lab safety during the week-long orientation. "We do take [teaching assistants] pretty seriously, and we try to let our graduate students know that," Chemistry Department Undergraduate Chairman Don Berry said. "[But their] major resource will be the professor of the course.. When you're being a teaching assistant for a course, the professor in charge of the course is your mentor." But faculty are not required to observe classes, and teaching assistants said there is a wide variability in professors' interest in acting as mentors. And that's where Penn's Center for Teaching and Learning comes in. In addition to helping with new faculty orientation, the Center holds optional presentations on teaching and individual advising for TAs. "What I help teachers do is figure out what is going on while they're [teaching]," said CTL Director Larry Robbins, who observes and videotapes teaching assistants' sections per their request. "My first goal is for them to develop a sense of self observation." But many teaching assistants said they were not aware of the resources available to them during the semester -- and only about 15 TAs turn out for a typical CTL workshop.

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