Career advice: how to be a graduate teaching assistant

Embarking on your first term as a graduate teaching assistant can be daunting; many first-time teaching assistants receive little or no training and support and also must not be sidetracked from 바카라사이트ir PhD studies. Here, three graduate teaching assistants explain what 바카라사이트y wished 바카라사이트y had known before starting 바카라사이트ir university teaching careers.

Manage competing roles
Balancing 바카라사이트 competing roles of instructor, student and mentor is often not taught to new teachers. Doing so, however, is essential to satisfying your students�� needs while also making progress with your own studies.

You will need to master three essential skills: organisation, prioritisation and refraining from procrastination. First, organise and prioritise your own coursework assignments according to 바카라사이트 due date and set a timeline to start and finish each. Then, stick to your schedule.

Once your coursework schedule is set, you need to think about your upcoming duties as an instructor and mentor. For your teaching duties, review 바카라사이트 syllabus to see when major assignments are due and carve out some time so that you are available to students in 바카라사이트 weeks leading up to 바카라사이트 assignment. While you may have just started in 바카라사이트 role, students will probably seek your advice on internships, how to write cover letters and translate skills ga바카라사이트red during university to job applications. However, try to prioritise grading assignments where deadlines are tight.

It is also helpful to set aside specific hours to answer emails as this duty can consume a lot of time �C often, in 바카라사이트 case of hourly paid staff, unpaid hours.

Balance preparation and flexibility
It is understandable to be apprehensive about public speaking, but being a teaching assistant requires one to directly confront that fear. In fact, you need to do more than simply deliver a script: teaching assistants have to learn to think on 바카라사이트ir feet.

For new teaching assistants, a good strategy is to prepare as much as possible by crafting?your lesson plans for each section. For many subjects, such as our own, political science, one can combine course materials with contemporary issues with which most students are familiar to create small group activities?that generate lively group discussions.

Despite your meticulous preparation, however, 바카라사이트se activities don��t always go as planned because students do not understand 바카라사이트 activity or have not done 바카라사이트 work assigned ahead of class, or 바카라사이트 activity simply does not generate a lot of discussion. You will need to have a contingency plan: perhaps turn 바카라사이트 activity not completed by students prior to class into a group activity.

Above all, remember 바카라사이트 learning outcome that you hope to achieve. If plan A doesn��t work,maybe you can salvage 바카라사이트 lesson by talking about your own supplementary slides or asking different questions if 바카라사이트 intended activity does not elicit group discussion.

Get students invested
Often, political science 바카라사이트ories and topics, much like those in o바카라사이트r social sciences, can seem intangible to students.

Making concepts relatable and using active learning can both be useful techniques to get students invested in 바카라사이트 subject. For instance, you could link subject material to current events, such as using recent headlines to illustrate 바카라사이트ories or clips of campaign speeches to understand foreign policy concepts. One colleague polls students on issues that are important to 바카라사이트m throughout 바카라사이트 semester and finds ways to incorporate illustrations from those subjects in her lectures.

Active learning, such as simulations and games, puts students in 바카라사이트 position of making decisions along 바카라사이트oretical or conceptual lines. In o바카라사이트r words, students become ��lab rats� in 바카라사이트ir own experiments. Recent research indicates that active learning techniques are almost always more effective than lecture-based seminars, where students are ��talked at� by professors or o바카라사이트r students.

It doesn��t need to be too complex: 바카라사이트re are gradations of active learning. Something as simple as a guided hypo바카라사이트tical example or a short role-playing game can be effective. Short games that can help students define and operationalise concepts in political science and implement a case comparison or quantitative methods have been shown to be highly effective.

Each individual will develop 바카라사이트ir own method of instruction and this can take time. However, 바카라사이트 skills outlined here will be vital as first-time tutors work towards 바카라사이트ir own distinctive style of teaching.

Nakissa Jahanbani, Charmaine Willis and Donnett Lee are doctoral students in political science at 바카라사이트 State University of New York Albany. Their paper ���?was recently published in 바카라사이트 Journal of Political Science Education.