While some international graduate students try to offset the cost of their Penn educations by becoming graduate associates or receiving fellowships, scholarships and grants, others take on a more difficult source of income -- teacher assisting.
TAing presents added difficulty for these students, who must do their own schoolwork, teach classes in a new language and adjust to American culture both inside and outside of the classroom all at once.
"It's a real challenge to be a grad student and a TA simultaneously," said Barbara Willenborg, coordinator of International Teaching Assistant Training and Testing. "In a second language, it's all the more difficult."
Though numbers of current international teaching assistants are not available, every summer between 35 and 70 new Penn international TAs attend a seven-week English Language Program -- which includes weekday class meetings of four hours each day, individual tutoring and several hours of homework daily.
At the end of the program, the TAs are tested by teaching a sample lesson, and are then rated on their English proficiency. Those who fail the test go into a fall follow-up session, while those who pass are permitted to become TAs.
Laurentiu Maxim -- a Ph.D. candidate in the Mathematics Department who is originally from Romania -- attended the program before TAing, but said that his English was still not up to par when he began teaching.
"I was able to express the math part of the story, but I was not able to communicate with people," he said. The students "kind of understood the problem and they tried to be more gentle with me. They realized they don't know math, and I don't know English, so we have something in common."
Mohamad Hindawi, who is originally from Egypt, faced similar problems with the language barrier when he relocated to SUNY at Stony Brook for graduate school and began TAing there.
"In the first year it was common for a student to ask a question and I didn't understand what they were saying and I'd have to ask them to explain or rephrase it," said Hindawi, who is now a Ph.D. candidate in the Penn Mathematics Department.
A Ph.D. candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication, Zhan Li -- whose English was good enough for her to place out of Penn's English Language Program -- said she faced other challenges in her TA experience.
Though she taught in her native country of China before coming to Penn, Li said that there were differences between the countries that she was not prepared for.
"I was surprised that some students had the thought that since they have been working hard on the homework or the paper they deserve a very good grade," she said.
Li added that many students came in to see her about grades they felt were lower than they deserved -- something that would almost never happen in China.
According to Li, this is because in China or Eastern colleges, the relationship between young and old or student and teacher is a respectful one, making it "very seldom that [a student] would come to the teachers to argue" about a grade.
Hindawi noted a similar difference between American and Egyptian students.
"I think the first thing a lot of undergraduates do when they don't understand something is blame their teacher and then maybe blame themselves," he said. "In Egypt, I think it is the opposite."
Another contrast that Hindawi pointed out was the high rate of participation in American classrooms.
"Here students usually participate more in class" than in Egypt, he said. "They ask more questions. Maybe because it's encouraged here or it's more socially accepted for people to express things like 'I don't understand that.'"
This level of participation is something many international TAs must learn about before stepping into the classroom, according to Willenborg, so that they will not be taken aback by it.
Classes in some other countries "are more teacher-fronted," Willenborg said. "They're not as interactive, so you don't have the kind of question and answering that is kind of the basis in the U.S."
However, despite difficulty in the classroom, some international TAs have little trouble adjusting to American culture.
"I think it's getting easier because our culture is becoming more pervasive in the world," Willenborg said.
Li echoed this sentiment, adding that "if I didn't have any direct experience of something ... I have read from journals or books or seen it on TV, so I have concepts of what it is. There was not a culture shock or anything."
But for other international TAs, becoming familiar with U.S. customs presented more of a challenge.
"People here are not so open, so warm," Maxim said. "After a while, I kind of changed myself. I became more or less one of them. I don't care that much about talking to people about what I feel like and about what I want anymore. I talk about nothing."
Hindawi said he had a similar problem with forming deep friendships in America.
"Just being in a place where all the people you knew are suddenly gone is difficult," he said. "It was even more difficult to make new friends, especially if you have a problem communicating with them from the beginning. It was hard to adapt to the fact that a relationship with people is more deep [in Egypt] than here."
But despite the challenges he has faced, Maxim plans to stay in the U.S. after he earns his Ph.D.
And Li, who plans to return to China after receiving her degree, said that she has benefited greatly from her experience as a TA in the United States, adding that she will bring back to her Chinese students the things she has learned in her time at Penn.
