How many hours a teaching assistant has to teach independently in classes?
Is it difficult to be a teaching assistant if you don’t know the subject completely? Is it possible to catch up in process?
Depends on how comfortable you are with making mistakes and not letting it show to the students. Teaching independently amounts to many many hours beyond the class period (this past week I spend six hours preparing lectures and reading material to be discussed in class, and twelve hours grading exams and essays). I have taught classes I wasn’t thoroughly up in expertise-wise, and generally it gets easier if you prepare early and read outside of general books on the subject.
Depends on how comfortable you are with making mistakes and not letting it show to the students. Teaching independently amounts to many many hours beyond the class period (this past week I spend six hours preparing lectures and reading material to be discussed in class, and twelve hours grading exams and essays). I have taught classes I wasn’t thoroughly up in expertise-wise, and generally it gets easier if you prepare early and read outside of general books on the subject.
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I’m a grad student in literature, and have taught for five years at the college level