Reflections
Fall 2022
As I reflect on another semester as an ENGL101H TA, I am immediately grateful for all of my students, as they teach me even more than I teach them. This is the first time I have been a TA for a fully in-person section, as last semester I had a blended section, which was partially online. Before that, the class was entirely virtual on Zoom due to the pandemic.
Now that I am in my fourth semester, I am noticing a marked difference in my comfort while interacting with students. When I first began this role, I was tentatively responding to emails and drafts. Today, I can respond without even thinking. I know that I can leave comments on a student’s drafts without the overwhelming feeling of carefully considering every word before I send it back. Additionally, I approach lesson planning much differently. When I first started my role, I preferred to write copious notes on my lesson plans in the hopes that I could foresee every possible situation and be ready for it. However, I quickly learned that is not the case. No matter how carefully I plan, at least one element of the lesson plan will go differently than I envisioned. This is often for the better, but it did teach me that I need to be flexible. Now, I am able to deliver a lesson plan with only a rough skeleton, because I know that I can fit the lesson plan to the needs of my students while I am teaching.
This semester, I had the unique opportunity to complete an alternative assignment for most of the semester. Usually, English TAs submit lesson plans, observations, and teaching logs. Because I have done this for several semesters now, I did not necessarily need to complete those assignments again. Instead, another experienced TA and I collaborated to update the UTA Guide, a resource for English TAs, especially when they are beginning the role. We undertook a detailed revision process, deciding what to keep, modify, delete, and amend. I am proud of the final product because I know it will help other TAs long after we have graduated.
As I prepare to graduate next semester, I will be moving into a one-year Master’s in Public Policy degree that I am already in this year as part of a 4+1 program. I know that I will be able to use my experience as an English TA in my professional career. I am much more confident communicating with others, I have honed my ability to write effectively, and I developed relationships with dozens of hundreds of students. These skills will only serve to make me a stronger employee in the future.
Spring 2022
Last time I was an ENGL101 TA, I was in a different major, ready to go into a different field. My experience as a TA was largely the reason I decided to change fields. Now, I am much happier, and cannot believe that I wanted to do anything else. My English background has already helped me in my professional career, which I am sure will continue to happen. When I first began this role, I would’ve considered it outside my area of study. However, I now understand that writing will intersect with any job I choose, and it will always be within my field.
This semester, I had the chance to use the major assignment and lesson plan I created last year. I think that I fulfilled this learning objective particularly well, because not only did I create the assignment, rubric, and lesson plan independently, but I was able to use it with multiple classes, so I refined it after seeing how it played out with two separate classes. This only made it stronger, and my professor is going to keep using it in the future. While I would’ve considered the lesson plan a success in its first semester, I had very different groups of students each semester we covered this assignment, so the revised version accounts for a difference in group dynamics, skill level, and even current events. Even better, my co-TA, who was my student when I created the lesson plan, used the same plan with her students, and also had success. I am so pleased with it.
In my third semester as an ENGL101 TA, this is the first time I have been a TA in any other class. I have had the opportunity to apply my skills in another class. As a TA in the Public Leadership program, I have led a small group of students for the entire semester. Having experience with a discussion-based class helped immensely. It wasn’t very writing-heavy, so I wasn’t sure how much overlap would be present, but I was very prepared for the role. Now that I know that I can use my skills outside of an English classroom, I am much more confident in my leadership abilities.
In the future, I know the leadership I have developed over three semesters in ENGL388V will only continue to serve me. This could be strictly in the professional sense, as I am considering a job in grant writing, or it could be more tangential, as I will always need to write effectively in my public policy career. Most of all, I will take what I have learned from my students. I learned something different from each and every one of them. They all had such individual personalities, and taught me even more than I taught them. From this, I will always remember to be learning from those around me.
Spring 2021
My second semester in this role taught me even more than the last. Almost immediately, I realized that each class is as unique as individual students. At the beginning of the semester, I was still teaching for last semester’s students. It took time for me to adjust to the new personalities and group dynamics within this class. Furthermore, I had to learn not to teach for the class I wanted. When I was still teaching as if I had last semester’s students in front of me, it wasn’t because I inherently liked them better, it was simply because they felt familiar. I knew their research topics, their pets’ names, their majors, how much they liked to speak up in class. Looking at the Zoom room in early February, I could not say the same. I did not know this class at all. So, I found myself longing for the comfort in actually knowing my students. This was somewhat difficult for me to get through, but absolutely made me a better TA. Soon, I remembered how much I enjoyed getting to know my first class, and how much I would enjoy this class as well. As the semester comes to a close, I know my students just as well. Even more importantly, I know that comparing the two groups is a futile task, because what will I get out of that? It certainly won’t change how I teach or interact with students. Instead, I should focus on each class as individual, and simply plan accordingly.
Over the winter, I set three goals for this semester. The first was to teach at least once per week. Additionally, I wanted more activities to be my own, instead of presenting my professor’s lesson plans. I absolutely met this goal, and it made me much more invested in the class. I could assess exactly what a lesson should contain, and then carry the plan through. My second goal was to continue to be responsive to both my professor and students. Even though this was a strength for me last semester, I did not want to become lazy in this area. I didn’t think it was possible, but I want to say I actually improved in this area. While it might not seem like much, because nothing has changed from the outside, I no longer feel guilt about not responding to students immediately. My response time is still usually an hour, but I feel much less emotionally invested in rapid replies. Finally, I had a goal to support my new co-TA. As it was her first semester, I wanted to offer her guidance without interfering or taking over. I think we have a nice balance. She is an excellent TA and always has amazing ideas on how to make the class better. We seem to have a good distribution between grading and other tasks that need to be completed. I am very proud that I have been able to meet my goals this semester, and know that it is largely due to the support I received from my professor, my co-TA, and my ENGL388V classmates.
My time as a TA has made me completely reevaluate what I want to do with my life, professionally speaking. I am realizing that I simply do not want to be without humanities classes throughout my time in college. I love writing, reading, and discussion, and my science classes do not always offer the same engagement that English classes do. To bridge this gap, I am currently in the process of changing my major to accommodate all of my interests. I love writing, and I have a great interest in policymaking. My time in the Public Leadership Scholars program fostered my knowledge of policy, and I have gone to take even more policy classes. Therefore, I would like to declare a Public Policy major. I cannot wait to see what I can do in the School of Public Policy, and I am hopeful that I will be fascinated by each course I take.
Fall 2020
In the past semester, I have grown so much as a teacher and a student. I have learned what I could have expected about leading a class, delivering a lesson plan, and grading student work. However, I also learned about topics that I did not even realize we would cover. For instance, internet grammar was not high on my list of expectations! I think I am a much stronger person for it, though. Not only have I developed the necessary skills to be a UTA, I have also honed skills I hope to use in my professional career beyond college.
One of the first readings we covered in the class had a great impact on me. “Teach Writing as a Process Not Product” by Donald M. Murray taught me that the way we think of teaching writing is fundamentally flawed. From a teaching assistant perspective, I began to think of teaching writing outside of particular assignment requirements. While I believe that we should give students the information they need to succeed on individual papers, I subscribe much more to the idea of teaching writing holistically. Even though my ENGL101 class is rooted in major assignments, I have definitely made a conscious effort to connect writing skills and rhetoric strategies across these assignments. To me, this makes the class much more relevant and applicable to my students’ lives after the semester comes to a close. As a student, Murray pushed me to think about how I view my own writing and assignments. I had been told by many professors in the past that learning should be prioritized over grades, but it took reading Murray and applying his theory in class to truly make this point applicable to me. Before this semester, when I heard that advice, I did not really understand how to implement it in my own life. I still cannot describe exactly how I am implementing it now, which I think is primarily because the main difference is a shift in mindset, but it is like a switch has flipped. And it is so useful. I was so grateful to have read Murray’s work so early in the semester, so it could make a difference in my life and then my students’ lives.
My next goal in the classroom was to give my students the tools they needed for success. While I would like to think that this goal took many forms, I primarily consider it around peer review and the revision process. I led several activities over the course of the semester, but my lesson plan that covered the entire class was about peer review, editing, and revision. When preparing, I considered David Kofoed Wind’s “Five Ways to Make Peer Feedback Effective In Your Classroom.” I mainly drew from his fifth tip to “start small and in class” (Wind par. 13). When designing the lesson plan, I had them complete a sample peer review together as large group. They could build on each other’s comments and ask questions, as Wind pointed out. This strategy worked well, and I could see a marked difference in their peer review for the following assignment. Additionally, in that lesson I also covered revision. After class, I feel as though my students better understood that revision can happen at any time, not solely after review. My only wish is that I had delivered the lesson earlier in the semester, but I am continuing to TA in the spring, and my professor and I have already discussed moving it to the beginning of the course. I am glad that I was able to give my students concrete skills to improve their writing, as well as their peers’ writing.
Some of my favorite discussions in ENGL388V centered around how we could make learning to write more accessible to a larger student population. I believe that academia can sometimes be a very inclusive group that is not welcoming to students who did not speak English as their first language or who have come from backgrounds that older academics consider “nontraditional.” Throughout my time as a UTA, I made an effort to ensure that all of my students felt equally supported, not just the ones that I could relate to the most. And, I tried to learn more so that I could better teach them. For instance, when I read “Editing Line by Line” by Cynthia Linville, I did not know the research that cautions against proofreading for students. Learning how students learn to recognize their own errors was hugely eye-opening for me. On one hand, now I knew that copious editing practice was not an acceptable strategy. On the other hand, which I would argue is much more important, I learned that I sometimes do not know what is best for my students. I should never assume that I know how to best help them without making sure I am using their time effectively. I have taken this humbling lesson with me in each day since, and I am much more judicious with how I divide time. So, while I learned about editing, l took away another valuable lesson in my own limitations as a UTA.
Going forward, I am positive my experience as a UTA will shape my entire professional career. When a potential employer sees that I was in this role, they might simply assume that it was because I had strong writing skills. While I do strive to better my writing, to me, that is the least significant benefit. As a result of being a UTA, I have gotten much stronger collaborating with my fellow UTAs to better our individual sections of the class. This teamwork has allowed me to appreciate what each teammate has to offer when collaborating on any type of project. I feel this is particularly important because as someone who wants to go into policy, legislation does not exist without teams. Collaboration is essential to success in that field. Also, as a policymaker, I want to prioritize communication with my community above all else. Ensuring that I can effectively communicate with them is something that I want to be very comfortable with. All of the skills I have put into practice as a UTA are skills that I will continue to use in my professional career, so I am very fortunate that I can already say I have experience employing them.
Moving past this semester, I will continue to UTA for my current professor. She and I have already discussed the possibility of me taking on more responsibility. I hope to deepen my skills even further in the spring. Finally, I know I will have a strong set of professional skills that I can use in my career long after my UTA position has ended. Being a UTA has given me more than I ever thought possible, and I am so happy that I chose to participate.
Works Cited
Linville, Cynthia. "Editing Line by Line." ESL Writers: A Guide for Writing Center Tutors, edited by S. Bruce and B. Rafoth, Boynton/Cook, 2004.
Murray, Donald M. "Teach Writing as a Process Not Product." Cross Talk in Comp Theory, edited by Victor Villanueva, 2nd ed., National Council of Teachers of English, pp. 3-6.
Wind, David Kofoed. "Five Ways to Make Peer Feedback Effective In Your Classroom." EdSurge, 12 Feb. 2018,
www.edsurge.com/news/2018-02-12-five-ways-to-make-peer-feedback-effective-in-your-classroom. Accessed 6 Dec. 2020.