In Hindsight: TAs

Welcome to another exciting intermittently updated post about life and stuff.

Today I would like to rage about being a Teacher's Assistant (TA).

In reality I love being a TA. I've gotten to help kids understand material, it helps keep me busy, and I love solving puzzles and bugs. The pay is also a nice bonus and helps pay for rent while being a poor grad student. The grading can be a little tedious, but a necessary evil so that the students get feedback on how they are doing.

The real problem I have is how the system is set up. I only have experience with the TA system at UC Davis in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department, but I imagine that this system is not an isolated problem.

To summarize, the system is designed to make life easy for the administration. This is completely understandable since it is the administration that set it up, the administration has to keep it running, and the administration is really the only one with the power to change it. However, this can be and is a poor deal for the TAs and the students.

Allow me to illustrate. Before each quarter, a mass e-mail is sent out to all the grad students requesting TA applications and letting people know which classes have openings. The students then respond with an ordered list of classes they feel they can TA for, their grades in the class or an equivalent, if they have taken the class at UCD, and if they have TA-ed for it before. A list of applicants is then forwarded to the teaching professor for any comments and recommendations for which students to have as their TA(s). All of this is then sifted through along with past performance reviews to select TAs. PhDs understandably get first pick.


So far, this sounds completely reasonable. This appears at first glance an excellent way to select TAs. Allow me to enumerate the flaws: poor self-application, professor preferential treatment, and the TA performance review is an utter mess.


First, a large portion of grad students here are NOT from UCD. Many in fact are from oversees, and a large portion are from other colleges, myself included. This means that a large portion of them have not taken these classes at UCD. They may have an "equivalent" course, but the material might be different, the pace slightly off, and the teaching style completely different. Quite frankly, I even feel several of the courses are worse here and cover less than my "equivalent" courses at HMC. So, does my lower grade at a tougher institution have the same weight as an inflated one from UCD? Will I be a perfect TA who knows all the nuances and remembers all of the labs given? The answer, of course, is no. The only thing I actually have is the knowledge that I retained from previously taking this class. Oh, and a document that claims I know how to self-teach myself anything I do not know/remember. It is a nice first-pass approximation since you don't want the kid who skimmed by with a D in that course to TA it, but hardly a good heuristic.

Next, note that there is input (potentially) from the teaching professor. If they recognize any names from the sheet, they can give comments and recommendations about selecting them. If they want, they can put forward students from their labs in a preferential light. Recall that TAs get paid. That means that if they are being paid via a TA-ship, they may not need as much research pay. I will do another post about the lovely research system here and managing their research groups. So, it is perhaps in a professor's best interest to put forward students from their own research groups. You also potentially can get a nice boost if you have ever taken a class from that professor and performed well. Granted, the majority of the professors do not even send back recommendations. Still, it is a murky area. It's great if the professor has been in contact with the student before especially if they have TA-ed for them before, but it's a bit of a random crap shoot on who can get the recommendations and not on actual TA quality. I am also pretty sure the professor recommendations carry quite a bit of weight in the decision process.


Perhaps the scariest part though is the considerations of past performance reviews. These are filled out by the students in the class. They are given a form where they give the TA a grade from 1-10, and a space for comments. They can also opt out of giving a score. This performance review is administered at the very end of classes and is confidential until after grades are released. A little known fact is that if a TA receives an average grade lower than 7, they are instantly put on the black list. No more TA-ing. Ever.

So, the students can grade the TA whatever they want, at a time where the TA has no chance to review the grades and thus perhaps change their habits, and if it is poor they are instantly blacklisted. Awesome.

I am sure any other person reading this who has had performance reviews while in a teaching position knows that the student is often extremely biased. A fellow teacher I know told me story where as a teacher they were called in about a bad review they received from a recent course they taught. This unnamed teacher instantly knew who the reviewer was. The student had shown up an hour late to a 3 hour class missing all the safety instruction, commenced to ignore instructions during the class, asked questions about something just explained three different ways, and after a while got frustrated and commenced to text through the rest of the course. All the other reports were glowingly positive. The bad review was summarily shredded.

One way around this as a teacher is to make every student feel extra special. Kind of a Burger King philosophy. Have it "your way"! Whatever the student wants, bend over backwards to help and get them through with a high grade. No wonder there's this giant feel-good generation, grade inflation, and morons who don't understand what a deadline is. If I say something is due at 1pm or else, it better be there at 1pm or else. But wait, if I am too "cruel" and stick to my guns, I'm going to get a poor review and potentially never get to TA ever again! However, in the real world, if you miss a deadline, it is the offender who is potentially fired. Weird. We have reversed this in the academic world.

There is also no incentive from the student's point of view to even care about this review. For one thing, it is common knowledge that very few TAs even look at these reviews. Apparently I am one of the few exceptions. Plus, every undergrad I have told about the <7-no-more-TA rule was surprised. By the way, I only tell students not in my class and who I have befriended as a peer so that I avoid inflating my own scores. Also, even if the TA read the review, they ca not change anything for this class since it is already over. As a result, you get either hate comments or happy glowing I want to date my TA comments. Everyone else just leaves a number, which is not especially helpful for future progress. The administration, to their credit, said that they are aware of how few comments are ever written down except for the really good or really bad ones and try to compensate for it in their decision and evaluation processes.

So, we have an arbitrarily biased, unhelpful, not-taken-seriously performance review, postmortem, that could potentially block you from ever being a TA again.


Let me tell you a lovely vignette. For the Fall Quarter, I was rated 6.9. For the Winter, I was rated a 3. By all rights, I should have never been a TA ever again with these numbers. Somehow I have lucked out and am a TA this quarter and get a chance at redeeming myself. Frankly, I was quite shocked at the 3 rating. I mean, I knew I was stressed, that the class didn't give me much face time with the students, and it was a tough class, but a 3? Heck, the professor apparently even praised my work and initiative to help the kids. I did not even feel like I changed much from the Fall Quarter. In response, I have talked things over with several professors and students, and have made several needed adjustments. Many were things I thought were normal. I was completely oblivious. This quarter I gave the kids an unofficial, but more comprehensive evaluation to fill out from a 1 to 5 point scale. Overall, I scored a 4.5. I was highly marked for helpfulness and openness, and had a 4.2 for respect (my one previous and still in-progress weak point). So, I have effectively rebounded from a 3 to a 9 in 5 weeks of being a TA. Wow. And they were going to blacklist me straight up without a second chance.


This is the biggest issue. For those who are oblivious, poorly trained, and/or just poorly equipped there is no chance at improvement. It is no wonder many students get one TA job and are never called back in. They are simply dropped, quietly, without an explanation. I lucked out and got my hands into the guts of the system, but I am sure many others are not so lucky. Plus, the oversees students may have strong accents that detrimentally detract for their scores. Is this fair?

How do we fix this? For one, I think mid-quarter evaluations for new TAs should be mandatory. Either their own form, or administered by our Teaching Resource Center (TRC) personnel. For TAs that have to lecture, a TRC official should visit, record a session, and go over it with them afterwards. Also, there needs to be a much stronger push for TAs to be well-trained and well-informed. I learned about the TRC early in the year, but passed it off as a kind of peripheral resource that was not for me, but for those fools who did not know how to teach. However, if everyone was required to access them I think the overall TA quality could improve drastically. You could have veteran TAs who are well equipped to TA several classes, being close in ability to a veteran lecturer instead of the next random grad student who has not been graded poorly from last quarter's reviews. I also feel that while the student reviews are good, that an independent source should be involved that is not tied to getting a grade from the TA. This can help counter balance those poor reviews from the stuck-up slackers who got poor grades due to their own faults.

Granted, there has to be a give-and-take. Most grad students seem to take being a TA as a peripheral job that just absorbs some time in exchange for money, and we don't want to save those TAs. However, those that truly care go above and beyond the time commitment, and really care about the students. They should be the ones who can get help. The current system seems predicated on initiation on the TA's part to get better, which in some respects help weed out poor TAs that don't care. Plus, it saves time for those that naturally do not need the extra help. However, on the flip-side, a stronger presence from helpful resources will greatly aid the middle group, who care but do not realize their own faults and do not think they need to initiate. Of course, mandatory full-time monitoring is not the answer, neither is stifling the TAs. However, a pro-active stance from the administration to help TAs would go a long way.


The TA system here is kinda warped. It really is based on giving the administration as little to handle as possible. Numbers fly in, TA positions fly out. TAs are left to sink and swim without even realizing when they are drowning until it is too late. The selection is based on hugely flawed and nonobjective measurements. A tighter and more personalized system needs to be added in, otherwise it's the TAs and the students who suffer. Just because I got lucky and got a chance to change doesn't mean anyone else ever does.


As a side note, I have taken it upon myself to criticize and help other TAs before it is too late. One was doing particularly poorly with boring lectures, a heavy accent, and seemingly tough grading. I could tell he was actually being generous on his grading. The jive I got from fellow students is that he was going to be blacklisted after this quarter. I could tell he cared about the students, and so I sent him a lengthy e-mail covering his problems and suggestions on how to fix them. He openly apologized and is now currently making amends, much to the astonishment of the other kids in the class. Granted, he can only do so much since the course itself is poorly structured, but at least he has a chance now. As a plus, I get a way better TA in the class too.