The professional benefits of your teaching position
Your teaching assignment is an integral part of your academic and professional development, whether you are planning on eventually working within the academy or outside of it. There are a number of ways you will benefit from your teaching experience:
- It allows you to share your enthusiasm for English studies.
- It gives you the opportunity to help undergraduate students become better scholars and writers.
- It develops transferable pedagogical and administrative skills.
- It allows you to better understand your own and others’ writing processes.
- It provides you with experience and material you can include in your CV or mention to referees and potential employers.
- Teaching assignments also often play a role in graduate student funding packages.
While the courses you teach may not always align directly with your academic interests, there are often opportunities in courses to draw on your specific interests and knowledge. Teaching also provides experiences that may enrich your own research and give new perspectives on material you cover in your own graduate classes.
For more information on how your teaching can enrich your overall academic experience, see the Centre for Teaching Excellence’s page on how to get the most out of your teaching experiences at UWaterloo. If you are an international graduate student who is teaching, the CTE's page on Being an international TA in a Canadian classroom contains lots of good information to orient you.