EDITORIAL: The art of teaching well

Teaching assistantsTeaching assistantsand students agreeTeaching assistantsand students agreenew TAs need moreTeaching assistantsand students agreenew TAs need moretraining. The CollegeTeaching assistantsand students agreenew TAs need moretraining. The Collegemust do more. In this respect, the one-day seminar given by the College of Arts and Sciences and the few existing departmental training programs are clearly insufficient. Teaching is an art, perfected over many years in the classroom -- and some tenured professors still haven't mastered it. So why should graduate students be expected to shoulder this load alone? Penn's size precludes all undergraduate education from occurring in small tutorials and seminars. For this reason, especially, it is imperative that the University' schools institute -- and mandate participation in -- a TA training program. The undergraduate schools should work together design one or more days of broad TA training, focusing on how to reach students and keep our attention during an hour-long recitation or a three-hour lab. In this session, which would be required at the start of each school year, TAs from all disciplines would have the opportunity to interact and share ideas. It would fall to individual departments to continue the training process -- with monthly brown-bag lunches hosted by professors who have won Lindback or Provost's Awards for Distinguished Teaching, and with videotaping and feedback from a tenured professor who observed a TA's classes. Departments like History and Chemistry, which have been praised for their TA training programs, could lead the way. Departments could also entice their TAs to attend these sessions -- and to work to improve their teaching skills -- by giving the sessions academic credit, and by evaluating TAs' teaching skills just like their mastery of subject matter. Only then will TAs truly be able to use the full scope and breadth of their knowledge when dealing with undergraduates, and only then will undergraduates get as much from their TAs as the TAs have to offer.