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.
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.
How teaching affects your graduate funding
Graduate students ordinarily teach two out of three terms in the academic year, with the third term being a scholarship term. If you receive external funding or take on a research assistant position, you may teach fewer terms in a year. You can indicate which terms you’d prefer to teach and your preferences will be noted, but teaching assignments are primarily made based on department needs and student enrolment, so your assignments may not correspond to your term preferences.
Your teaching position is an integral part of your term funding in your non-scholarship terms. Refusing a teaching position or failing to complete a teaching assignment can lead to the loss not only of the payment directly associated with your teaching, but of other parts of your term funding package.
If you have any questions about how your teaching affects your graduate funding, contact the Graduate Coordinator.