Day One

I've made it through the first day of TA training! It feels so good to have the first day jitters over with (at least until the first day of actual class...). We received a lot of information today, which is great because I had a lot of questions. Now, I have a lot of material to wade through. Today's pleasant surprise was that our program ended at noon. Only a couple days during the next week are scheduled to go past one, and I had been expecting a 9-to-5 kind of schedule. Really, I think that just means I'll have time to run errands on campus or work at home on my syllabus. It turns out that I'll have much more input in the class than I expected--there is a basic structure laid out and certain textbooks we have to use, but the specific readings, daily lesson plans, and details of each required assignment are up to me. I think that's an advantage, because it allows me to choose readings that interest me; but it will be time consuming. And it appears I basically have to plan the whole semester in a week. Thankfully, I will have plenty of support. They gave us lots of information on paper today (probably close to a hundred pages worth, plus the textbooks and extra resources online). In addition to that, we're going over important stuff as a group (that is, all 40 of the new TAs) with time each day to meet in smaller groups (which will continue throughout the semester, on a weekly basis). Right now, my small group is just the 3 other new master's students in my program (EL/L--English Language/Linguistics) and one PhD student in SLAT (Second Language Acquisition and Teaching, which is the progam I would continue in should I choose to get a PhD). In the fall, we'll be joined by the 2nd year TAs from those two programs and there will be 17 of us. Each small group meets with a professor who supervises and guides our work. Ours happens to be the director of the English 101 class, so I figure she's the real expert on how it's done. I really like her personality, too. She's definitely helped put me at ease. I think the expectations for TAs will become more clear each day, and looking over the schedule for the rest of the training has helped me feel like the things I'm nervous about will all be discussed. I made friends already with the PhD student in our group (I 'happened' to sit next to her in the large-group meeting), and am sure that I'll get to know the others very quickly. I think it'll be great to be a part of an on-campus community, which I never really was at UNM. Also, it's already become clear that graduate students are treated very differently from undergrads. It feels like there will be a lot more collaboration between us and the professors. It's more than that, but it's hard to put in to words. At any rate, I like it. Well, that's probably enough on the topic for now; those of you who want the play-by-play, just feel free to give me a call. For now, I'm going to skim some readings in my new textbooks...