Surviving and Thriving: Recommendations for Graduate Student-teachers from Colleagues Further Along the Path (original) (raw)

2016, Transformative Dialogues: Teaching & Learning Journal

Graduate students involved in teaching face multiple challenges, including providing frontline support for students, balancing relationships and time commitments, creating welcoming and effective classroom environments, engaging students, and creating or seeking supports as needed. They are supported by peers, who share insights and resources, and by faculty and staff, who provide teaching development opportunities. Going beyond informal conversations in teaching assistant offices, this article draws on the lived experience of interviewed graduate student-teachers, as well as faculty and staff who support them, to identify five key advice themes. Each theme was developed inductively from quotations, which have been interwoven with scholarship to provide advice that synthesizes the collective, scholarly, and personal insights of current and future graduate student-teachers, as well as the individuals and institutions seeking to support quality graduate student teaching.