Before the Semester
How will you start before the semester begins to establish a strong working relationship with your teaching team?
Here are some considerations for getting started.
Resource for Instructors Working with TAs
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Table of Contents
First Steps
Plan Your Timeline
Some instructors start preparing months in advance, while others focus on the final weeks before the semester begins. Giving yourself time for the work you plan to do, pick your own starting date.
Considering your teaching context and contract start date:
- When will you begin preparing to lead your teaching team?
- What steps do you want to complete when?
Identify Key Policies
- Identify the TA workload document for your course. The workload should list all TA responsibilities and expectations, including hours worked. Most departments have standardized workloads. In some cases, such as for a new course, the workload may be created by the instructor.
- International TAs must demonstrate spoken English proficiency. If you have any questions or concerns, your department administration is a good place to start.
- Determine if your department has guidance on lead instructor or TA responsibilities.
- Become familiar with campus-wide policies to ensure compliance: Graduate Assistantship Policies and Procedures (GAPP). This covers issues like sick leave and workloads, including disagreements about workloads.
- For a deeper dive into Graduate Assistantships, complete the online Training on Managing GA Appointments.
Department Example:
TA Expectations Template
Cassie Williams, Associate Director of Instructional and Professional Development in the Department of Mathematics, created a TA expectations template for all Math instructors working with TAs (20-30 instructors a semester).
Cassie’s team shares this template as a starting point to support instructors communicating clearly with their teaching teams.
Connect with Resources
- Become familiar with the services of the McBurney Disability Resource Center and the Office of Student Assistance and Support.
- Note preparatory events for your teaching team might also be completing. These may include TA Training by L&S, New Educator Orientation from Engineering, departmental orientation, or trainings related to ESR, COMM-B, or another course attribute.
- The Teaching Assistant Guide is a comprehensive campus resource for TAs.
- Investigate departmental resources to support TAs.
Set Your Expectations
Are there expectations you will want to clarify with your teaching team? It’s a great idea to take some time now to clarify those expectations for yourself, before you begin communicating with your TAs.
- What are you expected to do, and what are the responsibilities of your teaching team?
- Do some TAs have distinct responsibilities, like a Lead TA or TA Mentor?
- How many office hours are necessary for TAs, and when should they be scheduled?
- Are TAs encouraged to offer virtual office hours to accommodate students with varying schedules?
- If Office Hours are in-person, where should they be held?
- Are there any departmental guidelines or best practices for conducting office hours that TAs should be aware of?
- Should TAs develop their own section syllabus, or will they use a standardized one you provide?
- If TAs are creating a syllabus, what resources and support will be provided to ensure it is inclusive and aligns with departmental standards?
Consider your course policies and if/how TAs will be involved in enforcing them, such as:
- Use of generative AI (for resources, see: Generative AI in Teaching by the CTLM)
- Re-grading
- Late assignments
- What accessible practices will your class implement? Examples include approaches to course design, student communications, or assessment.
- Consider TA vs. instructor responsibilities and course procedures regarding student accommodations and McBurney.
It’s important to be clear on your own expectations for inclusivity and what consistency you expect across components of your course.
- Will you expect TAs to learn students’ names?
- How will TAs contribute to building class community?
- What steps can everyone take to prioritize mutual respect?
Team members may encounter grading disputes, excessive absences, classroom disruptions, or other challenging situations.
- What student situations should TAs handle themselves, and what should they pass on to you as the lead instructor? L&S has a Process for Significantly Disruptive Student Incidents that L&S instructors should be aware of, and make your TAs aware of. If you are outside L&S, explore whether your School/College/Department has a similar process.
- Consider having suggested steps for a TA who isn’t comfortable bringing up a concern to you. This is a good opportunity to remember the power differential between you and your TAs, and how that can affect the team dynamic.
It’s helpful to remember that for some of your first-time TAs, this may be their first job. Or for others, it may be their first time being employed in the US. Clarifying your professional expectations up front helps everyone succeed.
- Should they arrive early for certain class components or meetings?
- Are there standards of apparel or dress you want to outline?
- Reminders to speak to students and teammates with kindness and respect can go a long way.
Next Steps
Start Communication
How will you start communicating with your teaching team? A helpful approach can be to open with a brief email.
It is important to note contract start dates, which can be found here: Academic Calendar. TAs cannot be expected to work before the contract start, including checking and responding to emails.
You might use a welcome email to:
- Introduce yourself: Share what you find fun or rewarding about teaching this course and highlight your key teaching values.
- Share how the TAs can contact you.
- Remind your teaching team of the contract dates.
- Advertise relevant TA trainings.
- Give some next steps (when you will reach out again, when a pre-semester meeting will take place, etc.).
- Be clear about whether or not you expect a response.
Campus Example:
Pre-Teaching Checklist for TAs
Haley Briel in the Center for Innovation in Engineering Education shares a Pre-Teaching Checklist for TAs. Providing a resource like this is a way to support TAs as they take responsibility for their experience on a teaching team.
At the Start of the Semester
Meet with your Teaching Team
After you start communication, what are some approaches for setting a shared vision and building community before the semester gets going? This is especially helpful because TAs may come from institutions or educational cultures very different to this one or be unfamiliar with the role of a TA.
Instructors often find that a meeting with the entire team can be a good place to start.
Your first meeting agenda might cover:
You can use a range of icebreaker-style activities to get to know your teaching team and start building community.
Possible questions to ask could be:
- What is your teaching background?
- What are your career goals?
- What makes you excited about working with this class?
- Do you have any concerns?
- What was a time you struggled as an undergrad?
- What was your favorite undergrad course and what made it so good?
TAs might want to know:
- What the typical students are like. Who takes this course?
- How this course relates to the major or program.
- What challenges are common to the course.
- Other insight you have from teaching this course or related courses before.
- Why are these learning outcomes valuable for students?
- Brainstorm learning activities or assessments for the learning outcomes.
Generally,
- Address your responsibilities and what the teaching team should expect from you.
- Address teaching team responsibilities and what you will expect from them.
You may want to discuss the TA workload document and specific team expectations.
It’s also helpful to discuss resources for employees in this context. Who can team members go to if they have concerns related to their TA position?
Consider the categories under “Set Your Expectations” above, and clearly articulate any you find relevant to your TAs:
- Office Hours
- TA syllabus development
- Course policies
- Course accessibility
- Inclusive teaching
- Challenging situations
- Professional standards
Talk about what to do if a TA is sick or otherwise needs to miss a scheduled responsibility.
What are the procedures for:
- Planned absences
- Sick leave
- Colleague coverage
- Introduce technologies used in the course and provide resources as needed. Consider a brief tour of the course Canvas page, if relevant.
- Share rubrics, assignments, and othercreated course materials.
- Overview the course schedule.
- Have the team note busy times in their calendars.
- Discuss course norms around response times for student communication and grading turn around times, and if those vary across the semester or by assignment.
- Schedule regular teaching team meetings.
- Have notes from your meeting (and future meetings) accessible to the teaching team. If there is a Head TA for your course, you might delegate documentation responsibilities to them.
TA Example: Setting Expectations
“Setting your TAs up for success by being really clear in your expectations of how the classroom dynamics are going to look, how the interaction say between lecture and discussion or a lab is going to look like, how these parts are going to be integrated, and what you envision their roles to be.”
— Patricia Chan, Botany
From the L&S Exchange Podcast, Episode 18 by the L&S Instructional Design Collaborative.
Consider Individual or Small-Group Meetings
Do you want to connect with your TAs individually outside of the group meeting? This can create a helpful opportunity for team members to share personal and professional information about themselves.
If you have a large teaching team, one-on-one meetings with each TA might not be feasible. Consider instead meeting with 3-5 TAs at a time, perhaps mixing new TAs with experienced TAs to start building supportive networks.
You may want to discuss:
- What academic or personal responsibilities are on your plate this semester?
- How familiar are you with teaching at a large US university? (Ask about specific contexts relevant to your course.)
- Is there anything you need from me to be successful in your role?
- Do you have any questions or concerns you would like to discuss?
What If?
A member of your teaching team may be hired at the last minute. The new hire’s background will inform what you do next: Are they new to your department? New to campus? Have they taught this course before?
If you have one day—or any short timeline—here’s what you might prioritize:
- Send a welcome email to the new hire. (This email can serve as an introduction—copy the rest of the teaching team.)
- Quickly get them up to speed: Share agendas from previous meetings, forward team emails, and make sure they know the team meeting schedule.
- Connect them to essential teaching tools for this class, like Canvas and other course materials.
- Direct them to the appropriate administrative staff person for employee onboarding.
- Consider offering a one-on-one meeting in the next week.
TAs may be encountering your course subject or material for the first time. When this happens, it may be helpful to :
Address Over-Preparing with a Few Reminders
- Effective teaching doesn’t require deep knowledge of all content before the semester begins. (Teachers can guide student learning without being full subject experts.)
- Instead, a TA might focus on one or two week’s material at a time. Their preparation will be for teaching the content, rather than becoming a expert on all of it.
- Students ultimately appreciate honesty more than incorrect answers. Encourage TAs to practice using language like, “I’m not sure, I’ll get back to you on that.”
Encourage Helpful Preparation
- Set clear expectations about what preparation needs to be done and by when.
Facilitate Support from Experienced TAs
- It can be helpful to share best practices and effective tips during group meetings.
- Consider archiving lesson plans, learning activities, and other teaching resources from team members with deep subject matter experience.
Are you teaching a course for the first time or implementing significant changes?
If you would like support designing your course or planning the role of your teaching team, the L&S Instructional Design Collaborative is here to help.
TA Perspective
“Outlining expectations is good, or the arc of the class. Then I kind of know where to fill in to meet that, because sometimes syllabi change. There’s all kinds of interruptions that can happen, but if you know the end destination point, then you kind of know where to fill in the blanks.”
— Haley Johnson, TA in English
From the L&S Exchange Podcast, Episode 18 by the L&S Instructional Design Collaborative.
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