Many of the TAs you work with will be a part of tomorrow's professoriate. Their experience with you will help shape the kind of professors they become. The following set of guidelines, based on the article "Guidelines for Working with GSI's," from the Teaching Resource Center at the University of California, Berkeley, have been agreed upon by the University of Minnesota's TA Liaison Council as actions which characterize effective mentoring. These guidelines represent a faculty-TA relationship that the Council hopes each TA will experience at least once during their time as a TA.

View Your Course as One Step in Helping TAs to Prepare For Their Own Future Roles as Professors

Think of ways to make the teaching experience as meaningful as possible for TAs. For many teaching assistants, your course may provide their only teaching experience prior to assuming roles as faculty members themselves. While TAs certainly have something to learn about grading papers and leading labs, discussions, or field trips, these activities alone are not sufficient to prepare them for future teaching careers. However, TAs can learn a great deal about course design, delivery and instruction through discussions with faculty instructors. Regular opportunities to discuss goals for the course, teaching strategies, ways to improve student success in the course, and how well goals are being met allows TAs to view the teaching process from a perspective not available to them in their roles as only lab/discussion leaders. Consider ways that your TA(s) could be given a progression of responsibilities.

Collect Feedback From TAs About Your Teaching

Faculty members often assume that TAs will be forthcoming in providing them with feedback about how the course is going. TAs, however, are typically very sensitive to the power relationship involved in faculty-TA teaching arrangements and are reluctant to provide any negative feedback, even when they realize that students may be struggling with lectures. A regular, open invitation and time set aside to provide such feedback can demonstrate to TAs your openness and willingness to examine and improve teaching. Faculty members can motivate TAs to share concerns, successes and failures by discussing their own concerns, successes and failures in the classroom.

Encourage your TAs to Elicit Feedback from Students

For TAs who are teaching a class or a lab/recitation section, provide an early term feedback form so they can obtain feedback from their students. Although these forms should only be seen by the TA (i.e., not sent to you or other supervising faculty), you can invite TAs to discuss the results with you, their peers, a designated departmental teaching consultant, or a teaching consultant from the Center for Teaching and Learning Services. During a consultation, TAs and consultants may identify the TA's strengths and areas for improvement, brainstorm strategies to use in the classroom, and, finally, select strategies to implement. Eliciting student feedback in your course and discussing the results with TAs provides a motivating example. There are many other ways to elicit feedback. You might decide together which method(s) you would want to chose.

Observe TAs as They Teach Their Class or Section and Provide Feedback About Classroom Performance

Although classroom observations frequently evoke anxiety for both the TA and faculty member, a number of surveys on the topic of TA development confirm that most TAs who have been observed by a faculty member rate the experience as one of the most important in their improvement as a teacher. When observing lab or discussion sections, you also gain insights into student learning which can inform your lectures. Conducting a classroom observation sends a message to TAs and students that you care about student learning. Read more in the guide on Conducting Classroom Observations.

Share Teaching Materials

Although talking about teaching is one of the most important keys to developing as a teacher, many TAs-especially new ones-appreciate receiving succinct materials on different aspects of teaching (e.g., active-learning strategies, preparing a syllabus, leading a lab). Such materials are available from the Center for Teaching and Learning Services, and instructors can also be on the lookout for relevant discipline-specific materials to share with TAs. In addition, it's helpful to inform TAs about journals on teaching in their discipline.

Encourage Balance Among Teaching and Other Scholarly Activities

Faculty who work with TAs can help them to balance the competing demands on them in graduate school. Encourage time management strategies (e.g., setting aside blocks of time devoted to teaching, to research, to writing); encourage discussions about teaching (a research study on new faculty indicates that faculty who spend more time talking about teaching with colleagues actually spend less time preparing lectures); and keep yourself informed about the time TAs are investing in teaching. You might do this by suggesting that TAs track the number of hours they work and how these hours are spent. Providing a chart or form with appropriate categories (e.g., class planning, grading, helping individual students outside of class, etc.) could make the task both easier and more useful for the TAs. Refer back to agreements made at the beginning of the term regarding duties and workload and adjust as necessary. Lessons learned during graduate school can facilitate successful transitions to the role of new faculty member.

Help TAs to Begin Thinking About Assembling a Teaching Portfolio

Perhaps the most common lament of TAs who have gone on to faculty positions is that they were not aware of the importance of teaching experience and had no sophisticated understanding of the art of teaching until it was too late. You can provide guidance about the teaching process early in TAs' graduate careers by introducing the concept of the teaching portfolio. A teaching portfolio is basically the equivalent of a faculty research dossier. Everything your TAs do - including considering their teaching philosophy, creating course assignments, developing outstanding research papers with their students, and videotaping their classroom teaching - can be worked into a portfolio to help them as they progress toward their future careers. These teaching materials can also be useful when shown to future TAs working with the faculty member on the same course. Read more in the guide on Documenting Teaching page.

Ask for Feedback as to How Well You Performed Your Role as Supervisor and Mentor

This can be done using an anonymous form if you are supervising a large number of TAs. For smaller groups it will probably need to be gathered less formally. In either case, asking them to respond to specific questions is helpful. (e.g., "Name one or two things that I did that were helpful to do? What things that I did hindered your performance or made you nervous? What else could I have done to help you perform your duties as a TA more effectively? What else could I have done to help you with your professional development?) Again, you are modeling the importance of getting ongoing feedback in order to improve performance. See a sample form for TA Evaluation of Their Supervision Experience.