Special Guest Blogs!
Read on for insight from our veteran GAs
Adaptability
by Lauren Van De Hey
I took the Teaching of Writing Seminar (TWS) in the summer of 2020, before the first semester I TA’d. That was a good step in the long run, but initially it was overwhelming trying to figure out how to TA at the same time I was trying to apply the TWS lessons to a content course. I am thankful that I struggled in the beginning because I approached that course (Mass Media and American Politics) and every course since with the mindset of fitting writing in wherever I can.
In that first semester, I implemented a scaffolding assignment, including peer review, for one of the two course papers and a three-week discussion post assignment that allowed the students to interact closely with the readings and each other through writing. Those two assignments made it into my sections’ 15% participation grade, but several other ideas I had did not make it in. I presented a version of Heidi’s semester schedule template to the professor of the course and he strongly suggested that I keep it for my personal use but not distribute it. His exact words were, “You should give yourself some room.” Initially, I really didn’t understand how being more organized and sharing that organization could be a bad idea. Now I do. What my professor meant by “give yourself some room” was that if you want to make changes, it’s harder if you’ve already distributed a schedule. He was spot-on for that first semester especially because I did make major changes while I was trying to figure out how to TA and it would have been confining if I had implemented it then. I still use a schedule to plan activities that I would like to do, but the schedule often changes throughout the semester in response to what my students are struggling with, which can change between semesters. If you’re very sure nothing will change, I think the schedule is a fantastic idea; if you’re still figuring it out, making it for yourself may be the most useful—not everything you make needs to be shared to make it worthwhile.
I TA’d that same course again this past semester and while I still did a version of the discussion post assignment (2 weeks this time), I decided to do an opt-in peer review instead of the full mandatory scaffolding assignment. As a supplement, I added a peer review/self-review checklist for each of the two main papers that gave examples of strong and less strong thesis statements and outlined common errors. In addition, I gave a not-very-polished hour-long best practices in writing video in which I pointed out strong and weak thesis statements, topic and concluding sentences, and integration of supporting evidence using parts of 4-5 anonymized essays from the previous year’s essays I had graded. Was this better than the previous arrangement? I’m not sure; parts were better, but mainly this was an adaptation I felt best suited the situation. I had new students who needed different things from me in an updated course that had different circumstances from the previous year. The first time I TA’d the course, we were all still trying to figure out zoom and I had 3 sections, totaling 60 students. Last semester, we were in-person and I had 4 sections, totaling 80 students. I was not willing to read and grade 80 scaffolding assignments, even for C/NC, for that many students. So, I made two peer review/self-review documents and a video instead. The interesting thing is that I only realized I wasn’t going to create the scaffolding assignment two weeks into the course when I asked them to turn in a freewrite they’d done in discussion and it took much longer to grade than I had anticipated. I had to think critically about what would be most useful for them but also balance that against my own time and work. I now have a toolbox full of different assignments (and versions of those assignments!) that I can use for different courses and circumstances.
The main point I’m trying to make with this blog post is that TAing is a massive act of balancing different conditions and considerations that we must all make and we just hope that in the end we, and our students, have gotten something valuable out of the experience. The best thing you can do is to give yourself options and think of new ideas and try to implement them, but don’t be afraid to chuck them or adapt them to suit your unique situation. And finally, cut yourself some slack because we’re all doing the best that we can.
Overcoming perfectionism:
free form writing assignments
by Laura Ornee
One of the most useful lessons the teaching writing seminar taught me is the difference between writing assignments meant to produce a finished, polished product, and assignments meant to help students think through class material or questions of their own. Seeing students grow free in their writing, overcoming their perfectionism, and bringing the ideas from their small writing assignments into the classroom is not only incredibly rewarding, it also improves the quality of class discussions.
For me there have been three key elements to effectively using different types of writing assignments. The first is making the distinction clear to students. This means explaining the goal of every writing assignment to them (multiple times!), so they go into it with the right expectations. It may seem clear to us teachers that when we say ‘journal’, we don’t expect a polished paper, but in my experience many students, especially the ones that don’t have great faith in their own writing skills, will see any writing assignment as something that needs to be perfect. Something that has helped me is telling students to write out questions they don’t have the answers to, or things they don’t understand, in their assignment. It often gets them to ruminate on possible answers, which means they are engaging with the class materials on a deeper level.
The second element is the design of the assignment, which has to facilitate free flow writing. While longer exploratory writing assignments are possible, within the structure of a college course I think they are almost always going to have to be short, maximum one page. Both students and teachers do not have the capacity for longer ones. Aside from that, I think multiple short assignments work better to get students to engage with the material than one longer assignment. I also think this type of assignment should never be graded, if a student has done the assignment according to the instructions, they get full credit.
Responding to the students’ work is the final element in effectively using different writing assignments. Aside from exploratory writing not being graded, since that will put unnecessary pressure on students, your response can make or break the student’s view of the assignment as useful or not. I have seen many professors assigning weekly or monthly assignments that students later commented on in the evaluations as being useless busywork. A good rule to keep in mind, I think, is that if you make students spend time on something, you should expect to spend time on it too. That means providing useful feedback even to journaling assignments. This doesn’t have to be a paragraph of comments every time, but even a short line with every assignment can change students’ perception. A good way to let students know you really are interested in their thoughts, is bringing up what they wrote in class as a jumping off point for a discussion. This doesn’t take a lot of prep work, just write down a few lines from a few students before class.
The type of comments you give should be different from comments on formal assignments too. While steering students in the right direction if you see they are not understanding the readings is important, commenting in a way that students don’t view their writings as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ will help them feel free and confident in the next assignment. Phrasing comments as questions can help with this. I have also asked students whether they want me to correct their grammar and spelling or not: some students experience those type of comments as restricting, while others feel they get more out of the assignment that way. In my experience most students will not want this option, so again it does not have to take up much time.
When applying all these elements, students can get a lot out of exploratory writing assignments. As I’m sure many of you, like me, are used to writing for papers and being perfectionist about your writing, this free form of writing can be a bit of an adjustment. I have learned quite a bit from students who are better at free form writing than I am and it has been a joy to read their work. I have also really enjoyed this type of assignment as a way to get to know my students better, they are usually not afraid to put their thoughts on paper! All in all, it is one of the most useful things I have picked up from this course and I hope it will be for you too.
Relearning the wheel-
Remembering and relearning to teach students new skills
by Isabelle Ostertag
The infamous art-history slide test remains in the minds of students long after their undergraduate careers. Over Christmas break I was discussing what I teach to family friends and those that had taken an art-history course vividly remembered the slide tests. Notably, some people recalled this exercise with dread while others remembered them quite fondly. My central goal as a TA is that regardless of their thoughts on slide tests, my students feel confident in approaching them.
This past fall I was a TA for ARCH 1010, the survey course of architectural history required for all students in the Architecture School. After taking the Graduate Instructor Seminar on the Teaching of Writing I realized that I needed to rethink how I would incorporate smaller writing assignments and scaffolding to prepare my students to take slide tests on their midterm and final exams. During of the first lessons, I broke down how to study for such comparisons and what the expectations were for a strong response. Such a response would consist of a thesis statement with points of context and architectural analysis in support thereof. At the end of section each week I had the students practice writing a comparison of two slides for ten minutes, the amount of time they also have on the exams. We would then briefly discuss their comparisons together, going over possible thesis statements and important contextual information. The scaffolding of including practice comparisons helped to familiarize the students with the process of turning visual analysis into a cohesive response.
While I think the incorporation of such practice responses was helpful, after putting it into practice there are definitely things I would do differently in trying to teach new writing skills. The elements of what make a good response to a slide test really need to be broken down into basic elements for the students to review. Ideally this could be done by showing more examples in class before having the students try it themselves. Furthermore, it would have been an asset to have a smaller assignment with a single slide test besides the midterm and final exams. This would have allowed me to provide more personalized feedback and direction. Reviewing slide test responses as a TA has greatly helped in reminding me of how much our own knowledge of writing for a specific subject needs to be forgotten so as to remind us of the basics.
The workshops in the Seminar on the Teaching of Writing reinforced the importance of using planning and scaffolding to design assignments tailored to the specific writing skill or skills you want your students to learn. I am still trying to think more deeply about what methods can be used effectively to teach students how to use visual analysis to develop a thesis statement and response. Ultimately teaching how to write for any subject requires us to forget and relearn our own process of learning. Teaching students how to prepare for slide tests has forced me to recall the very basics of how I myself came to know how to write such comparisons.
The importance of a little wiggle room
by Elise Heffernan
On the last day of our seminar, I finally asked the question that had been frustrating me for the whole seminar. How could we implement the lessons we had learned if we were TAing a class with a predetermined syllabus? Heidi responded with the advice I needed: it’s okay to stretch the limits of a set syllabus. As someone who chafes against being told what to do, this was the wiggle room I needed.
In Fall 2020, I had the simple resolution to try to make my class engaged. We were still learning how to teach and learn online, so I was keeping my expectations reasonable. I was still stuck within the syllabus, but I was able to add discussions and short writing for comprehension exercises. Our syllabus had two scaffolded scientific manuscripts and was supposed to be mostly pre-recorded lectures. I added journal article discussions thinking that then the students could build up papers to cite in their manuscripts and at least sort of get to know their fellow students. The students struggled with online learning and the fact that the data we were giving them to analyze was just given to them, since we couldn’t collect it in person. But overall, I was as pleased as I could have been with my first steps to stretch a syllabus
Then in spring 2021 I got my chance to recalibrate the class. I took over as head TA, and the power to change the class was just too tempting. I had to find a way to meet the requirements of the second writing requirement class, while attempting to better adapt the lab to online learning. So, with the mixed enthusiasm from the professors in charge of the class, I restructured our lab and implemented many of the lessons we learned in the Teaching of Writing Seminar. We still did weekly article discussions and peer-review, but I took the two bulk labs (that the two manuscripts were about) and broke them into their non-living (soils and water quality) and living (trees and stream invertebrates) components. Rather than writing two fully scaffolded lab manuscripts, the students wrote a short (3 pages) lab note on each of the 4 new labs. The lab notes were easier assignments meant to display their thinking on the topic and start exercising their science clear writing muscles. My fellow TAs and I focused on correcting the science and would give feedback on argument structure. The final paper, which connected the corresponding living and non-living labs (trees and soil or invertebrates and water quality), was a full manuscript (abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion) that were peer-reviewed. Because the semester was short my original scaffolding for the final assignment had to be cut, but it turned out that the lab notes had served as a quasi-scaffolding, and so the students were able to whip up their rough drafts in no time. The lab modifications improved student writing; previously, the students would get lost in the connection between the living and non-living components of the lab, but by separating them, they were able to assess them independently, and the manuscript became an exercise focused on this connection, rather than understanding the individual parts. The adjustments also did not increase TA or student workload! Work smarter, not harder, right? But I might be biased. And this upcoming semester, the new structure can be easily adapted to double our field days from 2-4, so we get to collect the data ourselves!
I am not sure I would have had the courage, let alone the pedagogical arguments to restructure the class had it not been for the Teaching of Writing Seminar (TWS). As TAs we are seldom given the opportunity to help to develop the class. The objective in the new version of the lab was to emphasize field work and the science within a logical flow of lab topics followed by shorter and more focused writing assignments. The TWS taught me how to use writing to reinforce student learning, and how to build a better class. But most importantly, it gave me the wiggle room I needed to change my class for the better.