Forever In School

So school started this week. Yeyyy!!

I am back to work, on my thesis and as a TA. If you read this post, you probably know that I was not very happy with my first experience as a TA. And that I was offered to TA for the same course again this year. And I accepted the offer. So here I am! TAing the same course again, hoping for a better experience.

the course has 10 sections, each with 24 students. Last year when I thought the course, I was pretty harsh on those poor students in my sections. And It wasn’t my fault. The instructors of the course (four!), prepared marking criteria for each assignment. I felt obliged to follow those, in order to maintain the consistency among all the labs and the TAs. But the result was that my students ended up getting low marks. Apparently other TAs were not so faithful to the rubric. And it wasn’t fair to my student.

This year, I have decided to work with my own rules. (Shshshsh… Don’t tell anyone!) And I will work with my students to help them learn the material and get a more fair result from the course. And I will try to make friends with them. To be more on their side. To be more helpful to them.

I teach two sections on Wednesdays and Fridays. Yesterday was my first lab with section 1.   24 new students, 24 new faces, new names. I went to my lab wondering if I could change my teaching style. If it would work. How they would react. How the instructor would feel about it.

And it was very good, much better than what I expected. I was pretty confident, on the contrary to last year’s first lab! Of course, I owe it to the fact that I have done it before and I know mush more than I did last year. But at the same time, my mental model was different from last year. I looked at the students differently. They were not just subjects to my teaching. They were people with weaknesses and strengths, with emotions. They were the whole purpose of me being there.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not gonna be too easy on them. I have my own rules. I require classroom etiquette. I made a deal with them yesterday that if they are in my lab it means that they want to listen and learn. If they want to do other things, watch You-tube or giggle or talk, they can simply leave. They are not forced to stay.

But it all went very smooth. Even the instructor seemed to have felt that. He spent most of the 3 hours in the other concurrent lab across the hall. I hope my section 2 and my future labs go as well as this one. I’ll keep you posted on that.

I am also gonna share with you funny or interesting thins that happen in the class. One of the student in my first lab has these huge ear rings. It’s actually the piercing that is huge! It’s like a 1*1 in hole in each of his ears and it’s supported by a big ring. It looked something like this. Honestly, I couldn’t stop looking at his ears. All I wanted to ask him was: “Does it hurt??!! Why on earth did you do this to yourself??!!” Though, I managed not to do so!!