Guest post by Ty Ghaswala, CEMC and Pure Math (tghaswala@uwaterloo.ca)
This past weekend, I attended the CMS Winter meeting in Toronto, attending both research and education sessions. In particular, I attended a session about instructor training. One presentation in particular, by Vanessa Radzimksi from the University of the Fraser Valley, triggered a lot of thoughts about how (if at all) we train our future university mathematics teachers.
Vanessa gave a great presentation explaining a model for how they coach their graduate students in the teaching sphere. Here is a very very rough summary of the model presented:
- The grad students attend a large lecture run by an established faculty member once a week.
- The grad students are then responsible for developing and running their own smaller classes (like tutorials) for the same course each week.
- Additionally, there are weekly meetings between the instructor and the grad students for some good old fashioned chatting and reflecting on how things are going, and what should happen for the next week.
Was that a gross oversimplification? Most certainly, but you get the idea.
This post is not intended to be an advertisement for the model described above. In fact far from it. I simply wish to put down some thoughts about training our own graduate TAs in the math faculty here at home.
Often when thinking about how we structure our courses, we think about what is best for our students (righfully so!), and the grad TAs are sometimes simply part of the machine that helps our courses run. Very little thought (at least from a personal perspective) is put into what the grad TAs are getting out of their assignments. Often the thoughts don't progress far from "it's their job to help the course run to the best of our ability".
Proposition: Whenever possible, we should view a grad TA assignment (for those grad TAs who are willing of course!) as an opportunity to provide some training and guidance.
As with all things worthwhile, this requires conscious thought and maybe even a little work on the part of the coordinator or instructor team.
I am not proposing some radical and structured training program. Instead, there are little things that can be easily done, if attention is paid to the graduate students a little more. It could be something as small as ensuring the interested grad student has an opportunity to run a tutorial. I have heard several times this term that there are no tutorials in some particular course because students typically don't attend tutorials. To me, this reasoning misses an important point! Even if only 10% of students show up to a tutorial, it can still a valuable teaching experience for the grad student.
I would argue that when we give keen and interested grad students tutorials, and autonomy over said tutorials, they are more invested in the course. This has many benefits to the course itself (not just the grad student!). If communication lines are kept open, the grad students can provide valuable almost-real-time feedback about the course material. Heck, they may even do a better job grading!
Those are some of my cents. As with all blogs backed up by zero evidence, it may be completely misguided. If you think so, I look forward to discussing it with you over a drink!
