Advice to TAs

I am reposting my response to the question “How does one become a great TA?” in one of Berkeley’s online forums (EECS101 piazza for those reading who went to Berkeley) which got positive reactions from others:

Student facing qualities (i.e. Discussion/Lab/OH related):

• Prepared conceptually
• Communicates effectively. This almost always involves the prerequisite step of preparing beforehand; never underestimate prepping mini-lectures/problem solutions and coming up with diagrams. Using the blackboard well can be very helpful, and I’ve seen it set TAs apart from others. Other “performance” aspects like pacing and rhetoric are good to keep in mind.

Note that these are distinct. For example you can know your material but not be able to present it well, or vice versa.

Unlike the student facing aspect which can be done by oneself, being a TA also means you have other course staff responsibilities that usually require working with other staff members. Therefore the usual team skills apply, like:

• Communicating effectively with fellow staff
• Being responsible with deadlines
• Showing up to grading even though you may not like it

I’ve personally heard of instances where TAs were great student-facing but were not responsible course staff members which led to issues downstream.

What makes a “great” TA? I’m not sure about that, but here are my observations.

• Genuinely interested/excited about presenting the material
• Caring about students and other course staff members
• Consistently looking to improve themselves and the course as a whole. In my perspective this includes looking for feedback, being receptive to constructive criticism, and diagnosing potential problems & solutions that could improve the experience for course staff and/or students. I personally found shadowing other discussion sections and getting others to shadow me to be really helpful.
• Big picture idea for specific problems / main takeaways. For example, instead of just going over the solutions to problems, additionally include ways on how to generalize those techniques to other problems. Likewise, in OH I’ve tried to ask students “What are your main takeaways” after solving their problem to make sure they learn a more general skill/technique for future problems.
• Understands concepts at a “deeper” level. I’ve noticed that most of the conceptually strong TAs/Reader (and students too!) are the ones who get confused the most often and ask questions. They can easily spend an hour or two on verifying the solution to one single discussion problem or thinking of caveats where it could fail. (Full disclaimer, in general I view getting confused and asking questions as a “great” quality in life)