Turning to educators for TA training

While students receive most of their early education from teachers with extensive training and master's degrees in education, once they arrive at a university there is no such guarantee. But many of the fundamental aspects of teaching to high school, or even elementary school students, still apply to undergraduates. That's why some Penn graduate programs are turning to the Graduate School of Education -- which does not traditionally focus on higher education -- as a resource for instructing teaching assistants on how to perform better in the classroom. "A lot of the things that we take for granted at the high school level, we need to be doing at the college level," said GSE Professor Ellen Braffman, who ran a workshop for teaching assistants as part of a series of lectures held by the Annenberg School for Communication this spring. Braffman, a proponent of an active learning style that is generally overlooked in large lecture halls, ran the discussion by using each tactic on the group of graduate students and then explaining how it worked, even on them. "I'm trying to show that even at the college level, learning cannot be passive," Braffman said. "Some of the best strategies come from elementary schools." And most of the strategies, designed make learning a social and meaningful activity, were simple but easily overlooked. Braffman said that even where the teacher stands is essential to including the entire class in a discussion -- she suggested standing as far as possible from the student who is speaking, even if that means "crawling over desks" to get across the room. And the willingness to wait out an uncomfortable silence can give a teacher the leverage to draw a response from a silent classroom. Teaching assistants said these techniques would be useful, as they encounter resistance in the classroom even at Penn. Or as one doctoral student said, "The students won't do the damn reading." "The way you're talking about undergraduates at Penn are the way my students talk about University City High School students," Braffman said. But the minimal training that Penn teaching assistants generally receive, while full of information on University policies and expectations, has little room for instruction on innovative teaching techniques. "I wish [GSE] could be used more as a resource," Braffman said. "With some simple strategies, we could make [learning in the classroom] have more meaning for the students."