I'm in TA heaven. The prof leading this class is articulate and fun. His introductory lectures have been outlined the themes that will (hopefully) run throughout the course content. All this is not surprising, considering he is the department chair and has won awards for outstanding teaching, it is a big relief to me.
Also, even though the reader was only available to them this morning, most of the students in my sections actually read it, or at least part of it. They seemed relatively interested and volunteered comments without much prodding. Wow!
I'm in an interdisciplinary program, so all the other courses I have TAed have been in another department. Maybe students where more comfortable because this field has a stronger, more familiar, theoretical base? Or maybe the professor just picked out an interesting, discuss-able reading? Or did I just luck out and get a lot of enthusiastic students?
Last week I discovered the poetry of Tom Wayman. If you have ever taught a college class you'll appreciate Did I Miss Anything and The Detroit State Poems: Marking.
Tuesday, January 09, 2007
First section meetings
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3 comments:
The student grapevine on who is a good teacher and who isn't is very stong.. Teachers often end up with students who are attracted to a particualar kind of teacher. My guess is that this class probably filled up fast and that the students have heard good things about the teacher.
This should be a fun semester -- although, with really energetic profs, sometimes the TA ends up to be the bad guy -- because you do the grading, he's fun and you have to tell them that they only did C- work for the fun guy.
That is true, but this prof took over at the last minute, so I think it must be more of a departmental thing. There seemed to be a lot of interested people from a related major, which really helps liven up a gen. ed. class. Right now my U. is so over enrolled that almost any gen. ed. fills up.
Sounds like you are heading to an excellent semester.
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