Connecting with TAs
Last semester I started a practice to help me better connect with my teaching assistants (TAs). It worked well enough that I decided to continue it this semester. This practice, I feel, helps me get to know my TAs and helps me notice them as themselves rather than just a part of my teaching staff, for lack of a better way to describe it. This practice takes me 15 minutes a week across my 12 undergrad and grad TAs, so your mileage may vary on how long it takes you. For those with a very different number of TAs, I’d say this scales linearly, but not by adding one minute each week for each TA, see below for details. [Also posted on medium .] What I do The short answer is I checkin on each TA twice a semester via Slack. It’s a direct message with a mix of general how are things and specific stuff happening at the moment. I also use this weekly time to reflect on all the TAs and note anything I’d like to remember for future reference. The notes are usually good, like how one...