Thursday, November 4, 2010

Part Graduate Teaching Assistant

This is a role that I held for the majority of my my time at GMU, but that I am not holding currently. In order to make money so I can pay my bills while I am in graduate school, I worked as a GRA (Graduate Teaching Assistant). This meant that I taught classes and worked in the undergraduate advising office.
My first two semesters at GMU I was a TA for Psych 100 recitation sessions. The way GMU sets up their Psyc 100 classes is that students meet twice a week in a large lecture, and once a week in a smaller review session. I led the smaller review sessions. I met with about 30 students one morning a week to review the material that they had covered in lecture earlier that week. This was a great way to ease me into teaching. I only had to lesson plan for one day a week, and I was not the person responsible for introducing the material to the students. It was difficult though, because I didn't have very much control over the structure of the course, because it was Psyc 100, I had to cover material I wasn't very familiar with, and the students tended to not take theses sessions very seriously, because they had already gone over the material with the instructor, and didn't see a real reason for the recitation.
After gaining this experience, I was then appointed the Adolescent Psyc teaching position, and I ended up teaching this course 5 times over a year and a half. It was a lot of work prepping for the class, and a bit nerve-wracking lecturing to 70 students, but overall I had a lot of fun teaching the course. Adolescent isn't laden with theory, so I was able to get creative with my lesson planning. 
Finally, I worked in the undergraduate advising office for about three years. I have already talked about the work I did in there on here, so I won't bore you too much ;). 
Unfortunately, because I am doing managing full time this year, I can't teach anymore, but hopefully I will find a job for next year that will allow me to do this again. 

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