tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post6110242322463540016..comments2024-03-12T22:31:46.500-04:00Comments on What Would Phoebe Do?: Assorted academiaPhoebe Maltz Bovyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-45114531381282567152010-04-29T00:46:03.087-04:002010-04-29T00:46:03.087-04:00Matt,
I agree that standard TA work is work. But ...Matt,<br /><br />I agree that standard TA work is work. But the image the opening line of the NYT piece gives is of a grad student being almost a kind of protege to a prof, learning at the feet of a great master, which is more accurate for some TA positions than for others. Sometimes, from what I've heard, it's about a grad student half taking a class, half leading group discussions, which is less straightforwardly work. So on the one hand, there's the ambiguity of what to call professional training (see also: unpaid internships - when does 'educational' become exploitative?). On the other, there's teaching a language course. Teaching with help from faculty and as part of training, yes, but as the sole instructor for a course, the one many students think until told otherwise is their professor. While I'm getting something different out of teaching French than a high school French teacher might be, the service provided is near-identical. Given the amount of TA-ships at NYU (and no doubt elsewhere) that fall quite unambiguously into the latter category, the lede of that article struck me as at the very least uniformed.Phoebe Maltz Bovyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17996039330841139883noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7146512.post-37204428722433640042010-04-28T23:28:43.913-04:002010-04-28T23:28:43.913-04:00in my department, the normal situation is to teach...<i>in my department, the normal situation is to teach a course </i><br /><br />Interesting. I guess it makes more sense for languages, but do you just start right out (after a non-service year or something) teaching intro to French? Or is it something else? My impression is that there's a fair amount of variation between departments and universities so that, as you imply, it's hard to generalize what grad students do, but that even the pretty typical task of leading discussion sessions and grading papers is "work" in a quite straight-forward way.Matthttp://www.law.upenn.edu/cf/faculty/mlister/noreply@blogger.com