GRADstory: Being a teaching assistant (TA)

Udani was a Teaching Assistant for the HLTH 304 course by Dr. Annalise Ferro in Winter 2023. She explains she was responsible for holding office hours to mentor and assist students with course content and assignments, mark assignments and provide constructive feedback, and engage on the course discussion boards 

Being a TA allowed Udani to interact with students, which she really enjoyed. The course allowed her to see her students’ creative spirits, as she got to read and mark fun assignments like op-eds and posters. However, Udani shares that what brought her the most enjoyment was listening to students’ stories. As someone who changed research interests and fields herself, she says she really enjoyed talking with students about their career interests.  

Connecting with students as a TA also allowed Udani to learn empathy. She explained, “Being a student myself, I try my best to be fair and equitable to all students. I know how dejected I become when I underperform”. Her approach is to have separate section for areas of improvement in feedback, in hopes that students do not make the same mistakes. To guide students, she refers them to resources like the Writing and Communication Centre (WCC) and writing software like Grammarly. Udani believes in teaching students not only course content but other skills like communication and writing skills.  

Throughout her experience as a TA, Udani shares that she faced a few challenges, both in navigating LEARN and also in tackling situations when students are not happy with their grades. However, Udani was able to find resources to support her in these challenges and says the TA training on LEARN has been extremely helpful. Additionally, her instructor would usually hold a meeting to discuss the approach to marking and would mark a few assignments themselves to give her and other TA’s an idea of the expectations. If a student is unhappy with their grade, the course instructor was always there, which she found most helpful. 

Udani believes the most important skills for teaching are time management, communication, and organization. Udani recommends TA’s to be communicative with students and clearly indicate the expectations of assignments. Keeping track of students is important, so she encourages TA’s to have spreadsheets on OneDrive to track assignment due dates, dates for marking laid, late slips, and late submission penalties. Udani finds Excel and other apps like Notion extremely helpful for this because multiple spreadsheets can be organized in one file.  

As an international student TA, Udani also highlights that confidence and asking for help are the most important skills she learned. Udani acknowledges that asking for help, especially as a grad student, can feel embarrassing or like a weakness; however, in situations where you may feel lost, like Udani experienced when she felt like she might have to give a student a failing grade, it’s always a good idea to ask for help.  

Finally, Udani says, “your role is to help students, and I think it is important to clearly communicate with students about what you want from their assignments. Hence, empathy! Good luck to all the TAs!”