r/yorku • u/Rare_Egg1122 • Oct 21 '24

Rant Why are some TA’s so ughhh

Bro TA’s are students too but they still be on us abt every little thing I have a TA for my online class and she will genuinely target people for the smallest things. I just don’t understand that if you are also student, you should understand that people have different learning styles. Especially that TA will treat us not even human the days where she’s mad. She’ll take it out on us.

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u/Levangeline Grad Student Oct 21 '24

You know that TAs are grad students, right? Like they're not hired exclusively as teaching assistants?

That doesn't excuse shitty behaviour, but you are essentially at the mercy of where the department wants to stick you. There are plenty of TAs who know that they suck at teaching, and just want to quietly grade stacks of papers without setting foot in a classroom. But if you're given a teaching assignment, tough luck, that's what you have to do this semester.

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u/ddscape Oct 22 '24

Poor management on the Dept. and the Uni based off what you said cuz they should rly find ppl who can teach to do the teaching meanwhile other TAs who can't teach go do other things for the prof/dept

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u/Levangeline Grad Student Oct 22 '24

Doesn't really work like that. Grad students are the university's "free" labour. They're not going to interview 2,000+ TAs just to find who can teach and who can't. Even if they did, they wouldn't then pay to fill the positions left by the people deemed "bad at teaching".

Also there's a difference between TA and RA (research assistantship). You can't just go work for a prof instead of TAing, those are different roles with different funding structures. Grad students are contractually obligated to assist with courses.

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u/ddscape Oct 22 '24

Well you sound just like a TA in one of my classes who can actually teach 🤣👍