Best-Kept Secrets of the Graduate Teaching Assistantship

Assume the role . . . and take the roll!  That's all there is to being a Graduate Teaching Assistant.

Filling the time on Mon.-Wed.-Fri.:

    Monday-Wednesday-Friday classes are only 50 minutes long.  Here's a sample daily schedule:  
    1. If you take attendance slowly, you can use up ten minutes.  (If the class has fewer than 25 students, stretch out the roll by asking each student how he's doing that day).  
    2. Then, to break the ice, chat with the class about movies and current events for five to ten minutes.  On Mondays you can discuss what everybody did over the weekend, and on Fridays you can talk about everybody's plans for the weekend.   
    3. Give a quiz and let the students exchange papers and grade each other's (that saves you from doing homework).  By the time you read the questions aloud, allow time for the students to write answers, repeat questions, exchange papers, read the answers aloud, and explain the answers to the slower students, you'll have taken up at least fifteen minutes.
    4a. Now it's time for class discussion.  (Forget lectures: no one wants to hear them, and you don't want to prepare them).  If the class remains silent, just sit there and look at them.  If they don't want to learn, you can't make them.  Their education is their own responsibility.
    4b. (alternate) Divide the class into groups of four or five.  Have them discuss the day's subject or work on short assignments.
    4c. (alternate) Show a video.  Your library or university resource center probably has hundreds of educational videos.  If you run out of time, show the remainder next time.
    4d. (alternate) Since only 15 minutes remains, let the class out early, saying "It's such a nice day out . . ." or "Use this time to work on the assignment at home."

Filling the Time on Tue.-Thurs.

    Tuesday-Thursday classes are 75-minutes long.  But you only meet twice a week, which leaves you with a four-day weekend.  The sample daily schedule is the same for Mon.-Wed.-Fri. except for parts 4c and 4d.:
    4c. Show a video.  With 35-minutes remaining, you'll probably have time to watch the whole thing.
    4d. Let the class out early, but tell them to go to the library.

Give Yourself and Your Students an Occasional Break

    When planning your syllabus, allow at least three "individual study" days per semester.  Always put them on Friday (or Thursday, for Tue.-Thurs. classes).  That way you'll have a three-day weekend.  Explain it to your students this way: "On Friday the class will meet at the library for individual study.  I won't take the roll.  You may study anywhere in the library you'd like.  I may not see you, since the library is such a big place."
    Or work a few "catch-up days" into the syllabus.  In theory, such days allow the course to progress smoothly and not get behind.  In practice, you can cancel class on those days since you always make it a point not to get behind.

Planning the First and Last Day

    Don't plan anything.  On the first day, hand out the syllabus, show the class the textbook, and dismiss everybody.  On the last day, have a party or call it "individual review day for the final exam."

Teacher Evaluation Time

    Once or twice a semester, a professor may sit in on your class to evaluate you.  It's unlikely to be a surprise visit.  Rather, the professor will schedule the visit in advance.  You may be asked to suggest a day yourself.
    On the day before the visit, tell your class that a professor will be visiting.  Promise them that if they are particularly enthusiastic that day, they'll get Friday off.

Oral Reports

    Up to one-half of the entire course can be filled with oral reports.  Divide the students into groups of four or five and allow them to choose a topic themselves (this will take a day in itself, and may even require "library days").  You can go around to each group and approve their subjects.  Each student should give a 10 to 15 minute presentation.  Allow five minutes after each presentation for questions.  On Mon.-Wed.-Fri., two reports can be made per class.  On Tue.-Thurs., three reports (or possibly four shorter ones) can be made.

Though you only just graduated yourself, you can have the authority of a full professor.  When you write your name on the board the first day, add Dr. before it.  The students will never know.   By the end of the semester, you'll feel like one.

David, of Ironic Sans, had a great idea for a special "skip" button on jukeboxes:


That idea made me realize I'd be quite willing to pay five dollars in a restaurant if I could cancel an adjacent table's order of a fried calamari appetizer.  Fried calamari is, in my experience, the stinkiest dish one can order in a restaurant, followed by fish 'n' chips.  Fried calamari truly reeks, as even rabid seafood lovers will admit.  And if you're a vegetarian, fried calamari is a direct whiff of hell.  I'd gladly pay five dollars not to have my own meal ruined by someone else's second-hand fried calamari fumes, and the restaurant would still profit.

My five-year-old neighbor attended her first day of Bible school.  Her class went outside, and each child was given a paper bag.  The teacher told them to collect things that God made, such as leaves, rocks, and twigs. 

When the girl came home, her mother said, “So you learned that God made all things in the world?” 

“No,” she replied.  “He only made what’s in the bag.”

I decided to see the world through rose-colored glasses. But I didn't read the warning label: "Caution. All red objects will seem to disappear. Prolonged use may cause headaches, eye fatigue, disorientation, and/or apathy."

In Alaska, I was the only one who couldn't see the Northern Lights.

In Australia, Ayers Rock (Uluru) was invisible.

In Bermuda, I got sunburned and didn't know it.

In Switzerland, the Matterhorn was fuzzy and bright pink. I felt a headache coming on, but I didn't really care. I finally took off the glasses and gave them to a milkmaid.

My final stop was the Grand Canyon. At sunset, the sky turned purple, the sun was orange, and the clouds were pink.

"My God!" I gasped. I had worn the rose-colored glasses too long. My eyes had stuck that way.

beautiful

This is what David, a photographer and visionary thinker, saw when he reached for the last tissue in the box.  He calls it "Georgia O’Kleenex."

This homemade radio might be just the thing for picking up The Threepenny Opera. 

The Bio-Mechanics of Loneliness


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The composer Ken Clinger wrote a song based upon this vignette of mine about the parrot mimicing the microwave.  Here are the lyrics that Ken came up with:


[Here's a link to an mp3 of Ken's recording.]

I saw the documentary "Winged Migration" on DVD, and it got me to thinking a lot about magic and how breathtaking, uplifting miracles can become so disappointing (and worse than that -- actually negative, or an experience of spiritual diminishment) when one discovers the secret of how the trick works.  If you've seen the film, you know what truly magical moments were caught on camera.  Most of the scenes seem "impossible," so extraordinary are they.  I wasn't so much asking "how did they do it?" (because I knew they must have been in airplanes and holding cameras!), but more "how could they possibly have captured so many rare, once-in-a-lifetime occurrences?")  It was one of the most striking movie experiences of my life, and I have seen a lot of films (well-over three thousand films over the last decade alone).  Alas, I began watching the "making of" featurette on the DVD, and I was totally devastated.  The "secret" of the filmmakers was far more diabolical than I could have possibly imagined.  All of the magic drained away, and I was left feeling tricked (the bad kind of tricked -- as in swindled by con-men).  When a magician does something miraculous on stage, you've paid to be entertained and you delight in being fooled.  When a documentary filmmaker dupes you, it's a whole different story.  I found myself feeling outraged over and over again as I learned about the astonishingly elaborate methods the filmmakers employed to secure their footage (though they didn't put strings on the birds' claws and fly them like kites, such a method wasn't beneath them).  I actually had to shut off the DVD player after the worst revelation -- they crated up the pelicans and flew them in an airplane to Africa so as to record that leg of the birds' migratory "journey."  I would have far more enjoyed watching a cartoon about birds, or a LucasArts digital rendering of birds, because neither would have pretended to be a legitimate documentary.  Of course, it all boils down to packaging, doesn't it?  Had the sham-documentary filmmakers stated upfront that this film was an artistic depiction of how birds fly, and explained that all the birds in the film were actors (which is actually quite true, as the birds had been raised and imprinted by the filmmakers from eggs, then trained to fly on cue alongside the aircraft and to follow the sound of the squeeze horn), then I probably would have been quite amazed and delighted by so elaborate an endeavor!  As it was, they presented a fantastic illusion, then turned around and showed how they did it, leaving the viewer feeling gullible.  Had they been real wonder-workers instead of con-artists, they would have left the viewer feeling amazed, not duped.

Husbands and Knives:
Twenty Shocking Parallels in the Lives of
Yukio Mishima and Woody Allen

1. Residents of Westernized islands.
2. Short male persons.
3. Directors shunned by Hollywood.
4. Existentialists.
5. Commited public "suicide."
6. Expressed nostalgic yearning.
7. Avidly absorbed the culture of the East (or the Upper East Side).
8. Withstood vulgar curiosity about biographical anecdotes.
9. Obsessed with social disgrace.
10. Strong feelings about raw fish.
11. Involved with Asian women.
12. Interested in masks and disguises to express facets of their personality.
13. Fascinated by their own celebrity.
14. Recounted traumatic episodes from youth.
15. Attended tea ceremonies (or at least the Russian Tea Room).
16. Brandished phallic symbol representative of their art (sword/clarinet).
17. Forged in the smithy of their souls the uncreated conscience of their race.
18. Resisted fulfilling the role of son, husband, and father, yet desired to preserve ancestral tradition.
19. Wore costumes of period which they believed themselves to personify (Samurai robe/trenchcoat).
20. Died in their thoughts every morning.

The heart doesn't simply open.  It continuously opens, like a fractal bloom.

One of my favoriite comedy duos goes by the name "The Lampshades," and their spoof-lounge act is so funny that it's almost dangerous.  Dame Edna once had a gag where she kept a nurse onstage in case anyone collapsed from too much happiness, and that might be something for The Lampshades to consider.  Kate Flannery and Scot Robinson perform as The Lampshades in Hollywood.  (Though their long-running act is currently on hiatus while Kate is busy with her role in the television comedy "The Office," The Lampshades can still be heard on their CD and seen on their DVD: see TheLampshades.com for sample video clips and mp3s).  When I last saw them perform live, the guy sitting to my left kept looking over at me throughout the show, presumably because I was laughing so hard.  Maybe he thought I was a heckler or something.  Or maybe he just didn't recognize how much talent he was witnessing on stage.  What was cool about being in the front row was that I could see the wonderful subtleties of Kate's and Scot's facial expressions.  It seemed that Kate made about 8,000 different faces throughout the show, and every one of them had me in stitches.  I marvel at how much artistry goes into every moment of the show.

When I was 9, my 5-year-old kid brother convinced me that the craters of the moon formed the face of Abe Lincoln.  I didn't believe him at first, but he seemed so sure.  To children, Lincoln certainly comes across as a demigod, beardedly sitting on that throne and austerely bestowing freedom.  That night my kid brother summed up just how much "cents" I had.  He probably could've had a field day pointing out all sorts of imaginary constellations, such as the heavenly chariot of the divine Abraham (I would have fallen for that one right away, because I always thought the Lincoln Memorial on the back of the penny was a trolley car).  But I couldn't for the life of me follow the line of my brother's finger all the way to the heavens.  I didn't realize then that all constellations are made-up, formed by those who can picture the puzzles of life and convince others to connect the dots.

Reader Comments:

Jonathan wrote,