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发信人: haven (避风港), 信区: AdvancedEdu
标  题: How to be a good TA(3)
发信站: BBS 水木清华站 (Tue May 12 21:46:10 1998)

     2 Entering the Yale teaching community: you, your students,
     your instructor

     From the moment you accept your first TA position at Yale yo
     become part of a teaching community consisting of you, your fellow
     TAs, the students you teach, and the professors for whom you
     work. Whether you taught in a secondary school for ten years, or
     only recently arrived in the US, you may feel better remembering
     that you are only at the beginning of your career working as a
     university teacher, and learning to teach is something you share with
     many other TAs. We hope that Becoming Teachers, and the WAT
     program, will ease your entrance not only into the Yale teaching
     community, but also into teaching itself, by allowing you to share the
     insights and strategies gathered by experienced TAs, and to develop
     your own.

     This section of WAT is designed to assist in that process by
     providing information and ideas about certain aspects of our
     community that others have found helpful.

     2.1 You

     Students' reactions to you will vary. You will be better prepared for
     their response if you spend some time thinking about such things as
     your personal limits, how comfortable you are speaking in front of a
     group, and your role as an authority figure.

     The role of the TA
     Many TAs begin teaching their first sections with questions about
     their own function outstanding. What exactly should your role in the
     classroom be? How much authority and autonomy will your lecturer
     grant you? Will your students consider you a peer or an authority
     figure? The answers to these questions will in large part be
     determined by you and by the roles you feel most comfortable
     adopting. However, at the most basic level, you will be the
     intermediary between the instructor of the class and the students
     who are taking it. Part of your work during the semester will be to
     balance your role as the leader of the students in section with your
     role as the instructor's assistant (see section 2.3). WAT
     recommends that you communicate clearly with both students and
     instructor about the roles you intend to fulfill, so as to avoid later
     misunderstandings.

     Enthusiasm and expertise
     Our students look upon us as important figures, for we help facilitate
     their most interactive exploration of the course material. Often in
     lecture students simply listen; in labs and sections they are urged to
     participate actively. As a TA, you are responsible both for covering
     the assigned material and for uncovering this material, presenting it in
     a manner that both facilitates your students' understanding of it and
     provokes further analysis of the subject. While it is important to
     familiarize yourself with the subject matter at hand each week,
     expertise without enthusiasm makes for an unexciting class. Your
     eagerness to discuss particular issues, your interest in certain topics,
ircumstances you can reach them and they can reach
     you. Your lecturers are your first line of defense when problems
     arise, so it is essential to know how to reach them.

--
世情推物理，人生贵适意，想人间造物搬兴废。吉藏凶，凶藏吉。

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