Teacher's Assistant Update

Katie D.

November 10, 2009 - 5:08 PM

It's a strange thing to be an assistant teacher in a classroom full of your peers.

I'm working as a teacher's assistant for an honors college class on Global Energy policy, taught by physics professor Greg Bothun. I took this same class from him last year at this time. I enjoyed that class so much, and felt like I gained a great deal of insight into the realities of our global economy as we face global climate change and an energy profile that will necessarily change as the planet runs out of finite resources.

This second time around is completely different.

For one thing, energy realities have changed in the last year. When I first took this class, we were in the midst of astronomical gasoline prices and were just beginning to see the implications of the economic meltdown. Things change fast in the globalized world, and as resources are depleted and discovered, and as stimulus money is applied to try to recover from a downward energy spiral, this topic only becomes more relevant as time goes on.

But being a TA makes the classroom experience entirely different for me as well. I'm not hearing the information for the first time, but rather being reminded and updated on old information. But more important is my relationship with the coursework: I'm not participating in group presentations, but rather advising the groups and helping them prepare for their presentations. I'm not writing essays, I'm grading them.

The first group presentations were several weeks ago, and dealt with global energy initiatives. Each of the four groups was assigned an energy source and had to argue that that resource is what Congress should invest in. The choices were coal, oil, wind, and nuclear. My role this time around was to help the groups structure their presentations. The point of the exercise is to make a coherent argument for your assigned topic. This means finding sometimes obscure facts, manipulating figures, and creating a presentation centered on persuasion, rather than proving that you have mastered the topic.

This is harder than it sounds. First of all, Professor Bothun knows these topics backwards and forwards, and is not afraid of calling groups out on inaccurate data. But the most difficult part of the assignment is the creation of an argument. It doesn't matter how much information you have about wind energy: if you can't fit it into a matrix of environmental benefits, available funds, job creation, and feasible timelines, then Congress won't buy it. Or maybe Congress would, but Greg Bothun certainly won't.

The groups presented today on their second projects. Each group was assigned a state which they had to find a way to power using only wind and solar energy. The assigned states were Washington, Iowa, Texas, and Hawaii. This was a new topic for me, and I was so interested to see what the groups came up with as far as information about these individual states.

It turns out that all of these states are completely capable of providing all of their own energy in the next few decades. They all have abundant natural resources, and have added benefits such as transmission lines, low population, or a history of providing energy resources that will help them move in this direction. The "meta-lesson" in all this (the information not stated on the syllabus, but none the less the purpose of the exercise) is to experience the creation of a policy that is possible but politically difficult. The Hawaii group had to address ways to not clutter tourist areas with wind turbines. The Texas group needed to address the political climate that is generally not wild about the perceived left-wing nature of renewable energy.

In any event, I am finding this process of guiding groups in developing their projects to be a truly exciting and educational one.

Grading papers, however, is something completely different.

Writing papers is something I've done as long as I can remember. A three page analytic essay is but the work of a couple of hours. I know the formula, I've written papers on almost all academic disciplines. I had written essays very similar to the first assignment during my time in Bothun's past class.

But it is a very strange thing to be confronted by a peer's essay and be asked to apply a number to the top of it.

The first four one-page essays took me over an hour to complete. I had my template of a response, and I understood the basics of placing a grade on an effort. I also knew that Professor Bothun would be looking over my grades, and that I was not responsible for grading the papers of any of the students in the class who are my friends. But still. I read those pages over and over, trying to get a feel for what grade would be appropriate.

But then I got into the assignment. I started to see the basic elements of the responses, and started to know what to look for. I could spot the main points right off, and knew what points they had missed at the end of the page. They were describing the country's proposed future in Liquefied Natural Gas power as one of the three short essays. I began to see what needed to be said in order to get an ‘A,' and I started to be less shy about assigning lower grades to those who did not hit the main points.

By the last papers, I was flying through. I read over a few to check my numbers, and found that I was as fair and consistent as I knew how to be. And I enjoyed it. As strange and awkward as it was, it was also an amazing chance to see how other writers construct their arguments, and how various people encountered the same information or felt confused on the same topics.

And let me tell you, I have a pretty complete understanding of the challenges and benefits of Liquefied Natural Gas.

I really hesitated to work as a Teacher's Assistant this term. I'm honestly too busy to be participating in yet another class, with yet more work to be accomplished outside of the school day. But I'm so glad I'm doing this. It is a priceless chance to experience a tiny introduction to the life of a professor or teacher. I think I would like to go that direction someday, and feel like this is a good place to start: crafting arguments and grading papers.