TA Training

Reading "Teaching of Writing and Writing Teachers Through the Ages" by Duane Roen, Maureen Daly Goggin, and Jennifer Clary-Lemon in the Handbook of Research on Writing (2008) brought back memories of my own TA training as a master's student in Composition and Rhetoric. Over the course of the year I spent as a TA teaching freshman composition, I received a very comprehensive training program including many of the components the authors described--"theory seminars, in-service practica, teaching journals" (p. 358) and participation in a small-group cohort with other TAs. However, all of these things occured after I entered the classroom.

I felt well prepared for teaching because I had studied English education as an undergraduate, but the majority of my peers had never taught before. Many were in the MFA and literature programs and had no desire to teach freshman composition beyond funding their graduate degrees. I found it difficult to be in a group with so many reluctant teachers.

Designing TA training programs is a difficult task. Although some programs, like the one I attended, offer a brief crash course in teaching, two weeks of syllabus design hardly prepares one for the demands of the classroom. These teachers learn to teach through immersion and often rely on the strategies of their teachers to guide their pedagogical decisions. Is it any surprise we keep replicating the same teaching strategies over and over again?

As my TA training evolved, I saw my peers attempt to connect theory to practice. One photocopied an essay by Gloria Anzaldua that was a required reading in our 700-level theory class and gave it to her freshmen. When they refused to read the essay because half of it was written in Spanish, the new TA complained about her unmotivated students. I thought she needed to read some cognitive psychologists to inform her teaching. She thought I wasn't doing enough in my class to deconstruct hegemony.

Roen, Goggin, and Clary-Lemon note, "the writing center is a space in which many tutors and future writing teachers are finding valuable field experience" (2008, p. 356). Zelenak, Cockriel, Crump, and Hocks (1993) elaborate on the benefits of preparing TAs in the writing center. They found tutors are:

* less directive than non-tutors
* more confortable with conferencing
* able to see writing at all stages of the process
* able to quickly identify patterns or error in student writing
* more empathetic towards students
(Journal of Developmental Education, Fall 1993)

Perhaps new TAs should spend their first semester in the writing center working with individual writers while they learn composition and learning theories. Rather than placing TAs in a sink-or-swim situation, they can develop as scholars and future teachers before being given sole responsibility of a classroom. It's still not perfect, but I think it's an idea writing program administrators should consider.