The course syllabus excerpts are followed by a list of my duties as TA and my personal reflections.
Teacher’s Assistant
Introduction to Creative Writing 202, UBC
September-December 2011
Course syllabus excerpt:
The syllabus course description is virtually the same as the class above. Here is an excerpt from the writing assignment guidelines:
The assignment(s) are each five pages that best demonstrate your strongest creative writing. This includes a wide range of writing such as short stories, novel excerpts, children’s stories, lyric prose, creative non-fiction, poetry, a screenplay, a play script, or notes towards a graphic novel. If you are submitting part of a longer work, it is ideal to choose an excerpt that is comprehensible as a standalone piece (has beginning, middle and end).
Final Notes
>>The basic guidelines to getting a good grade are: ensure your reader won’t feel their time has been wasted and submit on time and at designate length.
>>Run a spell-check and REVISE for grammar mistakes, excess words, or lack of clarity.Your TA’s are: Natalie Thompson, Emily Davidson, Taylor Brown-Evans, Anna Maxymiw, Anna Ling Kaye, Erin Flegg. We are looking forward to reading your work!
Duties:
- Keep regular office hours
- Lecture on the basics of poetry writing (1.5 hours)
- Attend all lectures
- Grade student exams and papers—all evaluation is done anonymously (28 students x 3 papers x 5 pages/paper = 420 pages graded) (31 students x 3 exams = 84 exams marked)
- Collect student photocopying fees
My Experience
I loved learning from the professor and listening to the student’s insightful comments in class. They really knocked our socks off. Notice that the final note of the excerpt admonishes the students to, “ensure your reader won’t feel their time has been wasted.” This is a quote for Kurt Vonnegut (the great fiction writer) and it was a theme for the class. When I lectured on poetry basics, I really tried to show the students how good poetry makes the reader feel like their time was well spent.
There was one drawback to this class: I was not given my own students to supervise. This caused me to feel like I could only connect with a small handful of students. Because all evaluation was done anonymously, the students were confused when they wanted to ask about their mark or receive help. This drawback has taught me two things. Firstly, I prefer to work one-on-one with students. Without this type of connection, I tend to feel a bit disheartened. Secondly, the greater the degree of transparency between students and teachers, the greater the learning accomplished.