Life as a Teacher's Assistant

I was lucky enough to learn from a great professor at Bryn Mawr College who was responsible for running the laboratories. named Krynn Lukacs. While she was training us, she explained the lack of learning that occurs whenever a student’s question is answered with a “yes” or “no.” She found so little benefit to that type of answer that she actually forbade us from giving that response.

 

As a teaching a teaching assistant I was responsible for approximately twelve students at a time. I was responsible for their execution of the lab as well as their understanding of it. This including answering questions during the lab as well as office hours after the lab. In the beginning the students were very frustrated that they were not given a “straight” answer.  Sometimes they countered with, “you are confusing me.” They were so used to being told if their answer was correct without any other contextual information that engaging in a conversation about their answer was completely foreign to them. Initially it was a lot like pulling teeth. But, slowly, the students began to trust me and to trust my intentions. They saw me coming early to office hours and leaving only after the last student left. They saw that I was never “out to get them” like some of the professors were. They saw that I was truly invested in their learning. Slowly but surely we began to gel as a class.

 

I knew we were making progress when I overheard this conversation. “Michele is this question right? Hey, you can’t ask her that! Oh yeah, I forgot. Michele, I think the temperature goes up because the reaction started and I can tell because the beaker turned white. Does that make sense?” Then I started hearing students tell me that this kind of in depth question and answering was really helping them with their lab reports. The real breakthrough came when they realized that this format really helped them on their exams. This type of inquiry based learning has been shown to deepen students learning and this can translate to success in both labs and exams.

 

This type of questioning I think is imperative, especially in a laboratory atmosphere and on top of that, a group work laboratory experience.  It is easy for students to fall into an attitude of following a procedure step by step and not really being engaged with the overall experience. If the students are working in groups, it is easy for some students to become passive bystanders.  It is during this time that it is really imperative for the teacher or teaching assistant to ensure the students are critically thinking about each and every step and that each student is fully participating in some way.

 

Even before I was a teaching assistant I knew I wanted to teach, but I was completely surprised at home much being a teaching assistant would deepen my commitment to my goal of becoming a teacher. Watching the students learn and become more and more confident in both their knowledge and skills was an adrenaline rush like I have never experienced. I found myself looking forward to my labs and office hours more than anything else during my week. Someone once said, “If you love what you do, you will never work a day in your life.” I now know exactly what that means because it was how I felt when I was teaching a lab.