Beyond Language Courses and Into the College Classroom: TAs and the Full Scope of Undergraduate Teaching.

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From Elaine Showalter’s proposals in a MLA Newsletter to an Academe collection of essays focused on teacher education (Schrecker) and Solveig Olsen’s “[A] Plea to Graduate Departments,” calls abound to broaden the scope of pedagogical training available to graduate students and to document the professional development they receive. Increasingly also, PhD candidates are eager to gain experience teaching in a wide range of conversation and composition, culture, and literature courses because they see these opportunities as guarantors of credentials important for the job market. Their perceptions meet ready confirmation in announcements for MLA sessions on “Teaching as a Profession,” “The Teaching of Language,” “The Teaching of Literature,” and “The Teaching of Writing” (“Call For Papers” 15-16), which intensify the attention being paid to the instructional roles occupied by language and literature faculty. Meanwhile, articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education, such as Robin Wilson’s “Teaching Freshman Composition,” which describes the hiring of TAs from outside English departments to staff freshmen composition courses, suggest that graduate students are more frequently asked to teach an ever broader range of courses (A 12-14). Periodic increases in undergraduate enrollments and fluctuations in the adjunct pool that further complicate the changing employment picture have likewise directed attention toward questions of teaching. Still, the ways in which teaching assistants are prepared for new course assignments beyond the language classroom remain less clearly defined than in situations involving beginning second language instruction. Even when TAs are adept in language teaching through the intermediate level and in large departments this work is commonly done with a supportive cohort group of experienced fellow TAs under the guidance of a coordinator the prospect of going solo in a new course for more advanced undergraduates is likely to appe r at once exhilarating and daunting. While beginning professors at colleges and universities enjoy opportunities to participate in faculty development seminars, to be mentored by senior faculty, or to team teach with others, graduate students have only recently succeeded in calling attention to their own needs for such resources. A growing number of programs, including the P eparing Future Faculty (PFF) project described by Jerry G. Gaff and Leo M. Lambert, now give serious attention to the professional development of doctoral candidates. In fact, it was through this program on my own campus that I had the opportunity to serve as a mentor to a graduate student in my department, an experience that prompted me to consider what individuals need to know when moving beyond TA assignments and into the college classroom.1 Looking at this issue from the vantage of a program supervisor a perspective somewhat different from that at work in a one-onne mentoring arrangement I have discovered several factors warranting attention in discussions of advanced pedagogical training for graduate students. First, when appraising additional support needs for graduate students teaching at upper levels, departments need to take stock of the kinds of training that currently exist for TAs assigned to firstand second-year language courses. Many of these considerations will be discipline or course specific how to structure a writing-intensive class, what formal certification is essential for instructors of Business German, or where to locate curricular materials in a specialized topic area, for example.