CS301 Great TA Talk

Andrew Begel

February 8, 2002

What makes a great TA? Lots of things. Is it easy to turn someone into a great TA? Yes, but only if they want to be one. This talk will contain some of the highlights of what I do when I TA that I think is indispensable.

• Running Section
  • Plan for a few hours a night or two before section
    • Take notes
    • Write down everything you need to write on the board (you don't want to have to make it up on the spot and risk getting it wrong).
    • Practice (I'm serious) on your office mate or roommate. It doesn't matter if they don't have a clue what you're talking about.
      • This is incredibly useful for getting the "order of explanations" correct before you botch your first section.
  • Colored FAT Chalk
    • This is so important, it's not even funny.
    • Write something on the board with that skinny chalk they give you, go to the back of the class and see if you can read it.
    • Now repeat with the FAT chalk. See how much better that is?
  • Write down the administrivia on the board.
    • Your name
    • Your office hours
    • Homeworks coming due
    • Projects coming due
    • Rent coming due
    • Plan for the day
  • Coping with a short section
    • An hour is very short compared to an hour and a half
    • Let your students vote on the order of topics to be covered
    • Make handouts! The less you and they have to write, the more you can cover
  • How to wake your students up
    • In the beginning of section, your students will only want to sleep.
    • That means you have to wake them up somehow.
    • Try administrivia first.
    • Then try an activity that gets your students to talk, even better to get up and walk around.
      • Once, during section, I noticed that my whole class was falling asleep, so I made them get up and do jumping jacks for a minute.
      • Pop quiz?
      • Group work: moving chairs around and talking to their friends has to wake anyone up.
    • You can't fall asleep if you're talking
      • That goes for them and for you.
      • You won't fall asleep in the front of the room when you're TAing.
      • When you're speaking, the students won't speak.
      • Conclusion: If you speak the whole time, expect your students to sleep the whole time.
      • Try making a long pause once in a while
      • Ask questions of your students.
  • How to answer a student's question
    • When a student asks a question, don't just answer it immediately.
    • Ask yourself, "Why is he asking this question?"
      • Perhaps he didn't hear what you just said.
      • Perhaps he didn't follow what you just said.
      • Perhaps he hasn't been following the whole time.
      • Perhaps he didn't understand the lecture the day before.
      • Perhaps he's two weeks behind.
      • Perhaps he hasn't taken the prerequisites for the course and it's starting to show.
      • Perhaps he's in fact asked a brilliant question.
      • Perhaps he's a brainiac and didn't realize his question was off-topic.
      • Perhaps he's a brainiac and wants to show off.
      • Perhaps he's that guy: You know, that guy who doesn't ever shut up.
    • Then, instead of answering it yourself
      • Ask a clarifying question to see exactly what the student doesn't know. Work your way backwards through the curriculum until you figure out where the student is. Then try to work your way forward again, leading the student through the right path to the solution. If the student says the answer himself, give yourself a gold star.
      • Redirect the question to the rest of the class. "Can anyone else answer this question? Joanna? Would you like to take a stab at it?"
      • If the question is completely off topic, defer it to after class, or office hours, or an email response.
      • If the question is too basic, defer the student til after class, and suggest that they come to office hours for some personalized help.
      • Or, just answer the question. Boring.
• Interacting with your Students Outside the Class
  • Be responsive to email! Your students will realize you respond to them promptly and defer questions to email.
  • If you need to be somewhere and a student needs your help, utilize the walk and talk method. I hear President Bush uses it to great effect.
  • Go to lecture. Your students will sit near you and you can hang out with them. You can also watch them during lecture and figure out if there's a concept they don't understand.
  • Learn their names. When you call a student by name, they think you care. (Whether you do or not is purely up to you).
• Monitoring your Students
  • Don't wait for your students to come to you complaining that they're going to fail the class before you start noticing them.
  • If a student comes to you complaining that their project team members are losers and don't work, you've done something wrong.
  • If a student comes to you complaining that they haven't understood anything you've said for the past three weeks, you've done something wrong.
  • If your students have a four week project, create an artificial milestone at two weeks. Make them come to you and explain their proposed solution.
  • Meet with project groups often enough to know whether or not they've got flaky members. If there are any problems, they have to be solved quickly, or they'll blow up in the students' faces.
  • Note, this doesn't mean you have to be the group's mommy and monitor their email traffic. Let them show you how mature they can be. It's just that some of them won't be very mature, and it's better to deal with them than let them flunk the course because of their own immaturity.
• Managing your Time
  • This is probably the hardest thing to do.
  • Plan all of your hours very carefully.
  • If students know where your office is, don't let them come talk to you there outside of office hours. It's never "just a tiny question." Just say no (actually, just say, come back during office hours).
  • If you're too generous with your time at the beginning of the term, the students will grow to expect it, especially towards the end of the term, where your time begins running short.
• Having Fun
  • Teaching is incredibly fun for me.
  • I like to plan a fun time in the middle of every section
    • Fun with Scheme!
    • Compiler Potpourri
    • Continuum activities

Andrew Begel <abegel@cs.berkeley.edu>