The Successful TA: A Practical Approach to Effective Teaching Available to Purchase

The Successful TA is a short and practical guide to advise new graduate student TAs. It has a nice breakdown of several topics pertinent to TAing, many of which I personally would have benefitted from as I was beginning to teach. The authors begin by discussing relationships with the head professor of each course, suggesting conversational topics for the first course/faculty meeting. For example, “discuss your role, identify responsibilities, and clarify expectations” (p. 7). Other subsets of the book address specific facets of teaching, some of which new TAs may not have considered prior to teaching for the first time. These topics span preparation strategies, designing lessons/activities, facilitating positive classroom environments, application of academic and technical resources, and learning assessments. Something I found quite informative is how the authors incorporate proposed scenarios TAs may experience and suggest ways in which to address them through application of the authors’ main ideas....