Teaching Assistant for the first time

I did TA yesterday, and have just done Japanese teaching this morning. I got quite nervous especially before the TA. But both went well, or at least I thought they did. This time, just a few words about my first part-time job in the History Department.

One good thing. I took an extra care not to talk too much. And I tried to encourage them to talk among themselves. To my surprise, it was quite successful; I often interrupted the discussion, but i only did it to provoke them to speak more.

One thing to improve. Some spoke more than some others; so next time, I will try to involve everyone as equally as possible. For this, name tags would help. I can also give them some words of encouragement and feedback so that they can build their confidence through the discussion.

About preparation. I spent too much time to prepare for the discussion. Perhaps about 5 hours! No need to spend that much; maybe aiming at finishing preparation within 2-3 hours will be a good target at this stage. Just get a few points of discussion along with the questions given for each week.

The topic for the next session is the Black Death in medieval Europe, and the questions given are 1) How have scholars explained population change in later fourteenth century England?, and 2)How accurate are estimates of plague mortality and later medieval population levels? I don't know anything at all about the topic at the moment. But let's see how it goes.