Maybe it’s naïve to enjoy being a teaching assistant. The hours can be long, grading is often an exercise in patience and understanding, and the pay… the pay is never quite enough. Every brilliant idea that comes to mind has seemingly been written by someone earlier on in the field, and some days, it seems like there isn’t a single noteworthy idea that passes between my ears. Nevertheless, the notion of “rewarding work” has not been lost yet.
As a teaching assistant, I serve as the primary liaison between the students and the professor, making it a unique position with its own set of unique interactions and responsibilities. This means that I’m attending the classes that the undergraduate students are attending on top of preparing for and leading a weekly discussion section. Over the course of the semester, I’ll most likely come to know the students much better than the professor does, and—depending on how much they like me—the students will often try to engage in pleasant conversation with me when they walk into the lecture hall. If they have an issue with their grades, they will likely send me passionate emails explaining the reasons their grades should be higher than what was given, and (especially in intro-level classes) I’ll need to decompress the situation and explain to them that a college level philosophy course is more demanding than they expected. Add to this the competing desires to both be a kind human and objectively assess performance at the end of the semester, and being a teaching assistant is often a mental and emotional juggling act.
I start out each semester by demonstrating that I’m primarily interested in getting to know my students. I ask what their aspirations are for the course and why they’re taking it, and—thanks to reasonably good short-term memory—I surprise them by reciting all of their names from front to back at the end of the introductions. Of course, I’ll have forgotten them the next week, but the effort is there, and they’re often thrilled with the parlor trick. (Since the COVID-19 pandemic, this little trick has gotten harder to do because of mask requirements in classrooms, but it hasn’t been impossible!)
At various points in the semester, I like to take time in my discussion sections to address the state of their mental well-being. I ask how their semesters are going, how many classes they’re taking, and how they think the course is going for them. I remember my time as an undergraduate and how overwhelmed I was by needing to balance friendship, school, and sleep; many days, I simply couldn’t find the right balance and just had to let one of these go completely (Spoiler alert: it was school). As tempting as it can be to try to make philosophy appear rigorous and difficult in order to demonstrate the value it has as a field of study, I find that nurturing a healthy environment in which to think philosophically usually yields the best results. Perhaps this isn’t ideal per academic practice, but each semester I encourage my students to intentionally take a day off from our weekly discussion sections for themselves in order to attend to their own mental and physical well-being. Burnout is rarely addressed, and being an undergraduate student is often written off as the easiest, best time of life. However, especially during the pandemic, I find that my students perform best when they’ve taken the day off for themselves to do what they feel they need to do. Giving them some control and ownership over their attendance seems to move them to be more inclined to make the most of their time spent in class.
After the first or second of the large assignments in the class have been submitted, I also like to take time to stop and gauge how effective discussion sections have been for them. I do this by passing out some index cards or inviting them to write an email to me in class stating both their estimation of how successful the discussion section has been for reinforcing their grasp of the material and what they would add to make our time together more beneficial. I take the weekend to compile the responses into more general categories, and then I try to implement them over the next few weeks. Then, I take another survey to see if they felt their feedback was properly incorporated. I find that student preferences differ from semester to semester. Some semesters, students would prefer for me to rehash what the professor said during lecture, and in other semesters, students find the most benefit from engaging in philosophical discussion with their peers regarding the course material. Having points of assessing my teaching strategy for each discussion section demonstrates the reality that the discussion section is ultimately for them. Sure, it is a chance to do some teaching, but if that teaching isn’t the best way to help them understand the course material, then it’s a selfish pursuit.
Being a teaching assistant isn’t easy. But being a teaching assistant is worth it. A fond memory from my most recent semester was taking a brief foray through the metaphysical concepts of top-down and bottom-up causation. I wasn’t too sure how this would be received, but a number of students came to me after class to express how much more insightful this was than their entire year of courses in the STEM program. There won’t really be another time for me to work so closely with undergraduate college students while also receiving mentorship in the form of shadowing a professor as she prepares course material and lectures for undergraduate-level classes. Sometimes, the way that a professor conducts her course can really impact and influence the way that I think about teaching in general. I also have all the freedom to tinker with the discussion section as I see fit to see what strategies might work moving forward. Working in such close proximity to undergraduate students also prepares me to teach my own courses down the road, as I get live feedback on what works and what doesn’t.
While teaching assistant is the official title, the emphasis is often placed more on “teaching” and less on “assistant”—but the assisting is where the true joys are. At the end of every semester, there are few experiences more rewarding than reading feedback from students with stories to tell about being intimidated by philosophy but eventually finding their voice as a result of the adjustments made during the semester. There may never be another time such as this to develop my skills and compassion as an instructor, and this is why I truly enjoy being a teaching assistant.
Ben Fan
Ben Fan is a PhD Candidate at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is currently researching issues at the intersection of voting and underrepresentation (though he will always have a soft spot for metaphysics). When he isn’t working on his dissertation, he is likely running or teaching as an adjunct professor at the College of Southern Maryland.
