Thoughts on What Good Math TAs Should Be Like
“It’s not your fault.”
— Good Will Hunting (1997)
FOREWORD
Unraveling Knowledge’s Tapestry
(Ivan’s Thoughts on Math Teaching)
In gardens where the seeds of wisdom lay,
We tend the blooms, as mentors on display.
As guides, we lead all youthful eager minds,
To pastures green, where understanding finds.
With whispers soft, like feathers on the breeze,
We paint a world of sense, their minds to ease.
No tangled phrases shall shroud their view,
But threads of reason, harmonious and true.
If shadows fall, obscuring eager eyes,
The fault is ours, for we’ve concealed the skies.
We light the way, with lanterns bright and warm,
To chase the dark and quell the raging storm.
Our hearts an ocean, vast and deep, we bear,
A love for all, their burdens, we must share.
Each soul we nurture, with a tender hand,
In learning’s halls, united, we shall stand.
As wordsmiths crafting tales of wisdom’s grace,
We weigh each step, not bound by small misplace.
For math extends beyond the written word,
A symphony, where unfettered dreams are heard.
With passion’s flame, we light each eager heart,
As guiding stars, our knowledge we impart.
For in the joy of grasping wisdom’s reigns,
New worlds unfold, and endless hope remains.
Ivan Zhanhu Feng*
Apr 21, 2023; At USC Village
*Note that this poem is slightly modified by AI.
O. Teaching is not about us but about our students.
I want this to be my “zeroth” principle in this article, because it has a much more personal flavor while serving as the foundation of the other principles below.
At the beginning of my teaching career at USC, I essentially set up a goal in my life: to become an extremely outstanding math educator recognized by the world. I thought, “If I become the best math educator, then my students will benefit a lot from my teaching and their life will be much easier and much more fun with a better understanding of math.” But later, as I moved forward, somewhere along the way, I started to realize, “No, something is not working here.” I realized this goal I had was about myself: about me becoming an outstanding educator, and, if I do that well, then I’ll achieve Goal II, which is to give my students the best learning experience. Something is wrong. They are not in the proper order. I realized what I really want, deep down, is to give my students the best learning experience they can have and make their learning life much easier and much more fun — this shouldn’t be my Goal II, but should be, and has always been, my real Goal I.
Of course, Goal II (to become an extremely outstanding educator) is also a great and kind goal, but it should not outshine Goal I (to give my students the best experience). I believe if I do Goal I well, then Goal II will follow, but if somehow that doesn’t follow, I don’t care. I don’t care at all. Because I have achieved my primary Goal I, and that’s enough for me. That’s why the two goals have to be in the proper order.
This subtle tweak of goals in mind doesn’t seem significant but has made a great difference in my career. That means the purpose of me standing in front of a class is not to show off how knowledgeable I am, or how to impress my students the most with my personal charisma and flair, or how to prove to my students and my boss that I’m the best TA. Instead, the purpose should be to do what’s best for each one of my students, even when that’s not what’s best for me. Every decision I make, and every discussion section I lead, should not be about me but should always prioritize my students’ feelings and interests. That’s what I should focus on as a teacher: working on how to give students the best learning experience and joy, instead of showing them how great I am as a teacher.
I shouldn’t try to give myself the best joy and teaching experience throughout the semester, but I should try to give each of my students the best joy and learning experience throughout the semester, even though that causes me to not get the best teaching experience. Again, teaching is not about me, but about my students.
In addition, I don’t believe the best learning experience coincides with the best scores and grades because one’s learning experience is way more than a grade. That includes students’ happiness and fulfillment on their journey of learning, thinking, and questioning knowledge in this course as wisdom and contribution of the previous generations of our species. The journey is the best reward, much much better a reward than the letters in their transcripts. Exams or quizzes just don’t and can’t test students’ critical thinking and unfettered creation, and even in a way eliminate their critical thinking and unfettered creation, while these two elements are the truly most valuable knowledge that learning this course should bestow them. I don’t care about grades if my students themselves don’t care. I care about my students’ fulfillment and well-being. I’m an optimist and I believe in my students’ choice and judgment about their own lives. They have the ability and intuition to make the best decision that they won’t regret about their lives because they know themselves the best.
Moreover, I don’t want my students to admire and appreciate how perfect and knowledgeable I am every time they meet me. I want them to feel how promising and hopeful their own life and future can be every time they meet me. Because I’m the guy who has made originally complicated math super easy for them to understand and not mysterious anymore; they know, no matter how knowledgeable I seem to be, I can and will easily impart my knowledge to them in an accessible, attractive, and friendly way, readily making them as knowledgeable as I am — therefore there’s nothing to admire but only hope for them toward a bright future.
Along with that, I realized each time I prepare my teaching and write solutions to the best of my ability to make them as easy to understand as possible, it’s never because my responsibility as TA is calling me, but because my students’ eager minds are calling me. It’s never about responsibility but about love and expression: a selfless love from one heart to another, and an artistic expression that contributes happiness and wisdom to the rest of humanity.
I. Try our best to make what we teach incredibly easy to understand for every student.
If we can’t ensure that what we’re about to say will be comprehensible to almost all our students, then simply don’t say it! When we teach notions or problems, we have the responsibility to let our students understand them. No one wants to hear nonsense. If we teach nonsense, students might feel strongly depressed and less confident about the entire course. So, please cut them out of our teaching, leaving only coherent logic and reasoning that can be super easily comprehended.
Remember, if our students are distracted all the time, it’s not their fault; it’s our fault, because we didn’t make our course attractive. If our students find it difficult to follow our teaching, it’s not their fault; it’s our fault, because we didn’t make our teaching coherent.
It is common for some (maybe even most) TAs to only solve the problems they plan to discuss and then repeat their process with their notes during class. However, this is not enough! In addition to solving these problems on our own, it is crucial to find (at least try to find) the BEST way to help students understand our ideas and logic. In most cases, this best way deviates from a pure solution. Again, TAs should work hard to make their solutions acceptable to students; only being able to solve the problems is nowhere near enough for teaching! In our lives, we’ve got a lot of things to do. But during this period, in addition to our math studies, we’ve also chosen to serve as TAs. So we should focus on this thing seriously, and do it really well.
II. Focus on logic and concrete examples.
So how can we achieve incredibly easy-to-understand teaching? Here’s the secret: logic. Don’t look down upon it. While math is about unruly creation, teaching math is all about logic. It’s common for teachers to think that students having lots of questions is a good thing, but sometimes it’s just because teachers didn’t make their teaching coherent enough. In my experience, it is a sign of good teaching when your students start asking open-ended questions like how to modify the problem you are going through to get a different solution. Because this most likely indicates your students have completely understood the logic in your original problem and have succeeded in following and even exceeding your teaching process. However, when students keep asking how you got this step from the previous step, you should start reflecting on your teaching style. If you don’t, you’ll keep wasting the audience’s time (and life) and they will feel very sad and dissatisfied for not following your teaching. As teachers, we shouldn’t let our students feel this way. As human beings, we should contribute to giving other people happiness and satisfaction, not the opposite.
A super confusing problem can be easily understood with logic. Logic is like steps leading to the mountaintop. If we remove even one step, it could take students perhaps 1000 times longer (yes, this is not an overstatement in math) to construct this step on their own. While this building process is not completely useless (if you have a further vision, math is much more than building these boring existing steps), it is extremely avoidable and extremely detrimental to students’ confidence. So, we should carefully sort out the logic in the preparation of our teaching, and teach it super clearly. Again, teaching math is all about logic.
In particular, if we want students to have no difficulty following our teaching, we should always tell students the answer to these questions — how to get B from A — before they bother to ask. However, I should note that if a student asks why (instead of how) we deduce B from A, that’s not one of those questions that challenge our teaching style. Because, just like those “modifying problems” questions mentioned above, it most likely means the student has followed our teaching well and they are thinking about the motivation behind this step. Of course, these motivations are good to clarify in our math teaching, but they aren’t essential to complete the entire logic of a solution or proof. Would you agree? Most textbooks write proofs without any motivations at all, but they still survived (unfortunately), right? So, I don’t think it’s essential to discuss these motivations behind each step before students ask, since we might not have enough time in a lecture. Thus, being asked questions about motivations (why we do this step) by students doesn’t mean we’re not good educators, but implies our students are inquisitive thinkers. However, again, these motivations also play a central role in math, so we should select some motivations that we think are important to share with students within the limited time of a lecture.
In addition to logic, examples also play a critical role in our teaching. They will magically pull high-class abstractness in math down to approachable concreteness. Remember, being nonabstract to you does not mean being nonabstract to beginners. Abstract math is just like a sole tree crown hanging in the sky, without a trunk or root; hence this tree has little potential to keep growing. Rather, abstractness is always supported by concreteness. In most cases, certain impetus and motivations of concreteness are serving as the “root” that supports everything. With them, a complete tree with vitality and the ability to continue growing will be obtained, which provides a future for mathematics. Therefore, abstractness is not modern math; concreteness is modern math and is the future of math.
III. Make our teaching funny and flexible.
Humor is a super valuable trait of great lectures, which is almost nearly as important as its ease to understand as the previous two principles discussed. Making our teaching extremely easy to understand will already be able to produce great lectures in math, but if we further combine the lectures with a tasteful sense of humor, they will become stunning and wonderful. By blending humor into lectures or discussions, our teaching will be taken to a whole new level with much more pull and glamor, which are the traits that attract students from playing computer games to listening to our lectures with ease and fun, and then loving this course. That way, we will not only make our course not intimidating anymore but also make it attractive and much more fun, therefore making students’ lives much more fun.
Embracing humor could also give us more flexibility away from tradition in lectures, which makes our teaching too formal and rigid, boring people very soon. Who wants to listen to pedestrian, monotonous lectures? I guess not so many people. Our lives are already filled with trivial and boring routines to go through, and in that boredom, we want something out of the ordinary, something different and interesting. So it definitely wouldn’t hurt to give our teaching a bit of flexibility to make them different and out of the ordinary, instead of always sticking to being traditional and serious. In a more constructive way, with flexibility, we will be able to form our own unique style that distinguishes our teaching from anyone else in the world. Such a unique style is highly likely to make a deep impression and influence one’s learning experience. And such impression and influence will be extremely positive in students’ learning experience as long as we incorporate into our teaching all such extremely positive aspects as innovation, challenging the status quo, love, and taste. These positive aspects and the impressions about them made possible by our flexible and tasteful teaching will make a huge difference in students’ careers, in terms of the way they think, and therefore continuously leave a positive mark on their lives.
IV. Never ever judge students by their questions.
In our early childhood, asking “why” is how we learn and feel everything in this new world. We would ask extremely simple yet lively questions regardless of how “stupid” they sound to many adults. We just asked. As we grow, have we preserved this simple curiosity well? Curiosity is still the best driving motivation to push any field forward. Therefore, as educators, we are supposed to always respect our students’ curiosity, encourage our students’ curiosity, and nourish our students’ curiosity. No matter how silly their questions might sound to some people, we should not consider them silly. Remember, Isaac Newton asked himself a super childish question in the summer of 1666: Why would an apple fall down instead of falling upwards or sideways? But that childish question finally led him to the discovery of universal gravitation.
I firmly believe, every question has its unique value. And every question is a good question. Because of that, we should strive to create an environment where everyone feels welcome and free to ask any questions. I always tell my students, “In this room, within these walls, no silly question exists. You are always welcome to ask everything in your mind, no matter whether the answer can be found on the board or in previous lecture notes. And I’d be very happy to answer anything you ask. If you don’t feel like asking me questions here, don’t forget to ask yourself, and finally get them answered. That’s also great. Just preserve your curiosity well and never let it go.”
Moreover, here’s a seemingly minor detail I’d like to emphasize. In today’s academic culture, it’s common for a teacher to say a question just asked by their student is a “good question”. That sounds nice, but be aware, when we say that, we’ve unconsciously divided our students’ questions into “good questions” and other questions that we didn’t label as “good”. In other words, we are judging students’ questions right after they are asked, inadvertently infusing the classroom with a hint of favoritism and inequality. This is not our original intent and not what our students prefer. Since we encourage questions and truly want to clear our students’ doubts, we need to let them know they don’t have to only ask “good” questions. They can ask any questions bothering them in their minds. Why would we categorize questions as good or bad, well-posed or silly, anyway? Such categorization can be super discouraging and unproductive. Let’s treat all questions equally and not be quick to judge and grade them. If we like to address students’ questions as good, that’s fine, but let’s address all questions from our students as good questions to show our encouragement and appreciation. This way, we genuinely encourage students to ask whatever confusions or doubts they have without worrying about their questions not being recognized as “good”. This way, we truly embody the spirit of this principle: there are no silly questions and every question has its unique value. Therefore, this way, we will truly be able to create a more equal and fair learning environment that nurtures our students’ experiences and mindsets.
V. Be empathetic and take fairness extremely seriously.
TAs ought to be responsible for caring about each student’s feelings. We are supposed to be sensitive about our wording and never make our students feel stupid or unwelcome. The guideline for every course decision should be based on our students’ feelings, not ours.
The backbone of such caring is fairness, a word that tends to be underestimated. Actually, in some sense, fairness is even more important than politeness. That is, if one has to be rude, then it’d be better for them to be rude to everyone equally than being rude to some people and polite to others. Because in the former case, others would consider him ill-educated and possessing such a rude personality, while in the latter case, those who are treated rudely might take his rudeness more personally and therefore would be bothered more by the rude behaviors. So, if we want to be rude, we should be rude to everyone equally. But nobody wants to meet a rude person, so, as well-educated and literate human beings, let’s be polite, and be polite to everyone equally.
On the other hand, exclusiveness must be seriously rejected: if we offer something to one student, we should offer it to every student. We should allow nothing to be the privilege of a small group of people. No matter what their math background or any background, they deserve and must be treated equally with dignity and with true respect, the same as you would show to your family, boss, and friends.
Even if we have a fondness for some hard-working or talented students, we shouldn’t show this preference in front of others. While the favored students might be okay with it, for the rest, it’s disheartening to see their teacher not give them equal attention and affection. Such actions can hurt their feelings. As committed educators and kind human beings, we can’t allow that to happen. We just can’t. We must show equal attention and support to all, not just to some, because every student deserves our care and love, not just a select few. We should never allow favoritism in front of a class. If we love one, we should love all.
Note that if someone asks for help personally, it’s completely okay to offer additional personal help because they asked and everyone has equal opportunities to ask. So, this is not exclusiveness. I believe true fairness largely lies in equal opportunities. Students may produce unequal outcomes based on how much time they’d like to invest in this course and how much they choose to prioritize this course in their lives. But fairness means they must be given equal opportunities. Clearly, in our course, the responsibility of providing them equal opportunities largely rests on us, and it’s a significant responsibility that we need to pay serious care and attention to. We should handle it well.
As we shouldn’t judge anyone by their questions, we also should never judge anyone by their current performance. If a student is not doing well in our course, what we should do is first seriously reflect on our teaching and the grading structure, and then try to figure out how to help them do well in a way that they are willing to happily accept. It’s not a good idea to treat someone differently for their performance even if this difference is in a good way, such as spending evidently more time answering a question they asked than other students asked in front of their classmates. We might mean well by giving them more suitable tailored assistance, but such assistance might likely make them feel uneasy or special, which is a feeling not everyone enjoys all the time. Instead, we should offer the assistance that they truly want, and that assistance should not be pronounced enough to possibly hurt anyone’s self-esteem.
VI. Don’t be a harsh grader.
We may need to grade quizzes or homework as TAs. Don’t take off their points for trivial math errors (e.g., leaving out details or even bad handwriting) whenever you can avoid it. Of course, we’re responsible for pointing them out in our comments on students’ quiz submissions, but, again, we don’t have to let them know by deducting points. Why? Just take a look at most mathematicians’ manuscripts, and you’ll understand true math is about ideas and creations rather than these trivial details — math is much more flexible than strict. It would only upset most of our students and give you a lot of complaints if we deducted trivial points. Trust me, having been a student learning math my entire life, I know this and haven’t yet forgotten it.
Then again, being not harsh does not mean we should go to the other extreme and avoid deducting any points at all because that would be not fair to those who got the problem right, which violates the previous principle about fairness. Moreover, practically speaking, if your comments really corresponded to no point deduction, many students perhaps would not pay much attention to them, or even not open and check this graded submission assuming they did it perfectly if it was submitted in Gradescope. So, we should be insightful and tasteful in creating our grading rubrics: never be harsh, but strike a good balance making sure it’s best for our students.
VII. Only assign reasonable homework (or quiz) problems if we have to.
It’s usually not TAs’ responsibility to assign homework or write quiz problems, but in case we are required to do so, we should never give students excessively difficult or troublesome problems that contribute to their grades. Such assignments would make our students’ lives miserable and instill fear in them about learning the subject if they still value their college grades even to a small extent. We must not take away our students’ joy in life and hope for the future.
This aspect becomes even more crucial if you are currently terrible at teaching. Be aware, it would already take students all their life to go through your mysterious lecture notes. Now what? You also let them deal with your inhumane, dreadful homework problems? Give us a break! Have you thought about what makes math hard? THAT is what makes math hard. Math could have been incredibly easy and fun had we been truly tasteful teachers who conducted thorough research on teaching and genuinely cared about our students’ feelings.
Again, for problems counting for grades, we should only give students a reasonable number of problems reflecting our teaching materials and within their not-too-hard reach. However, if we are confident that we are accessible teachers and exceptionally capable of being understood, then it wouldn’t hurt to attempt giving some more challenging problems, but ONLY for extra credit or as optional assignments that allow students to compensate for missed homework submissions. These challenging or open-ended problems should not carry the same weight as regular problems do in grading; otherwise, their difficulty would outshine students’ passion for this course gained from our accessible teaching.
VIII. Keep sharing sufficient information with students.
As an optimist, I believe people are smart in making their decisions based on sufficient information. So personally I’ve never hesitated to share with my students information, whether it’s my homework and quiz solutions or plans for discussion sessions, because I believe that it will help students make decisions that are best for them and maximize their efficiency. As TAs, if we have past exam solutions, we ought to be generous to share rather than make them exclusive, because students will find a way to apply your information to them, like by printing out our solutions and reviewing them before the actual exam, in a way that is best for their learning and well-being.
Moreover, we shouldn’t only give them information when they ask, but we should provide all necessary general information in advance to save our students’ time and energy to bother asking these trivial questions like what the course’s grading scheme is. They have more important things to do. However, if we have provided all the information and students still ask us, we should not lose our patience and tell them to find it in the syllabus or one of the emails we sent them. Instead, we should explain what they want to know as if they hadn’t been provided with the information. People have busy lives and may not have the time to sift through our extensive information, especially when the information pool we provide is vast and detailed due to our consideration. In such cases, the most convenient option for the students might be to ask us directly. At the same time, we, as the ones who compiled the information, are the best people to clarify doubts. So, why shouldn’t we answer them patiently? And at the end, gently point them to the resources we’ve provided so they’re aware for future reference, in case they don’t know about this information pool.
Let me provide another example. As a TA who leads discussion sessions, if I let students know which problems on their worksheet that I’m about to discuss the next day in advance, then they will be better prepared (if they want to) before the class and therefore gain more control over this discussion. I put everything in a Google sheet (like this sheet I used in a calculus course) and update this sheet every night before their discussion day (Tue and Thu), so I don’t need to bother them by email every such night. First, if they think I can always make sense to them in discussions, they will choose to do those problems I DON’T plan to go over on the board beforehand and therefore they can finish all problems within the discussion session as well as become more proactive and prepared when discussing them with others and therefore find confidence and pleasure. Second, if unfortunately they think sometimes I’d teach something they find hard to follow (which would be totally my fault), then they can also choose to do those problems that I DO plan to cover in advance so it will be much easier for them to understand my teaching and therefore gain much more thinking and benefits from my teaching and therefore find confidence and pleasure as well. Third, if they don’t care about this course that much and don’t think they have time to prepare anything in advance, they can also safely ignore the plans that I send to them in advance and let everything remain normal, because a reasonable amount of information, unlike homework assignments or quizzes or exams, does not give people extra pressure. These pieces of information will free people’s lives with a sense of control and therefore make their lives more colorful instead of more miserable. So, again, all these choices and freedom for students are enabled by sufficient information that I shared.
Equally important, simplicity is the utmost sophistication, so we don’t have to share too much excessive information, which may very likely undermine the truly useful pieces. Nobody wants to be bombarded with course emails every week; otherwise, they might not want to see any of them. We should carefully choose which ones are truly useful in students’ learning experiences, to make information sufficient and also necessary. That will maximize the efficiency of students’ acceptance and the value of truly beneficial information in their experiences and so they can get the most benefits.
IX. Course decisions and rules should be based on democracy.
We know rules are important, not only for a class but for optimal solutions in politics and the running of society because they standardize a community with more certainty and order. That highlights the importance and influence of course rules we make in the syllabus or verbal course decisions we make in discussion sessions. For important decisions (like those relating to grading or exams), it’s best to let students who want to vote decide by voting. Here are a few important things to consider. First, we should ensure that every student is aware of this voting and can’t allow ourselves to leave anyone unknown or behind. Usually, no one wants to be forgotten or ignored; otherwise, they might feel they are not important in this process. Second, if anyone doesn’t like voting or wants to abstain, we have to let them know that they can safely ignore these votes by doing nothing. That way, they will not have extra pressure or responsibility from this process (the same issue we discussed in the previous item). It’s important not to give them extra pressure because that will make them tend to dislike this voting procedure. If achieving democracy requires taking up students’ excessive spare time, then this democracy is likely not going to go very far, even though at its core it’s a good system. So the result might be that both sides lose: we lose because our democracy fails, and students also lose because they didn’t finally get the democracy that they will find beneficial.
For example, as a TA who’s given latitude by the instructor to write weekly quiz problems, suppose you decide to mandatorily require (including deducting their scores if they don’t do it, which is equivalent to being mandatory) every one of the students to write their own 2-page quiz problems in LaTex each week consisting of all different types of problems, and then you select some problems to build the actual quiz paper. That sounds very democratic, right? You even let students decide their own quiz problems by a process like voting. But it’s very likely most students would think it’s a bad idea because you have given them an extra task to worry about, besides this course’s original homework, among their already tight schedule. This is an actual task because of its connection to final grades, meaning at its core it’s not truly optional for them. So, since more and more students might not like to bear the extra task of your democracy, this will very likely fail, despite your seemingly perfect excuse of democracy and “doing that for their future”. It’s true that spending an hour writing problems each week might give them another opportunity to review the material and better prepare for future careers, but one doesn’t only have the future; they also have “now” — don’t forget that current well-being is also an important aspect of one’s life. Are we really willing to be hard-hearted enough to give them an only ‘possible’ better future at the cost of immersing their current time and joy into our extra and avoidable tasks? We should believe in people’s decision-making, give them the necessary guidance toward an optimal solution but let them choose what’s best for them to follow.
As another example, in the calculus sheet I provided in the previous item, I have an additional column called “Comments (e.g., Any other problems Ivan should cover?)” where students can complain about the problems I choose to discuss (too easy or too few) and ask me to discuss some other problems that they find harder and more important. That ensures I’m not the ‘dictator’ who controls the discussion sessions, but students have the final decision to control the course of discussions. In practice, there might be only a few students who actually give me problems to discuss in the sheet, while others safely ignore this column. That shows it’s not like an assignment that they have to finish, and therefore it doesn’t give them any extra pressure.
One other benefit is that having rules voted on by the public can save everybody time challenging and questioning their reasonability. It’s good to question existing rules, but once we know the rules are not determined by one person (for example, the TA or the professor) or a minor group of elites, but by the majority of the public, then some skeptics may tend not to question or complain these rules or even report them to the Office of Professionalism and Ethics. Because they know that these rules reflect the opinions of the majority, and they probably will not win, so it’s less worthy to try for a change. As a result, these rules, voted on by the majority public, will likely have much longer vitality, and more people will benefit from them than rules exclusively made by the professor and/or TA. Positively influence people’s lives filling them with more confidence and certainty, pleasure and optimism, both for now and for their future. That is why we do what we do, right?
X. Always learn from students and never lose faith in the flow of diverse ideas.
When we think we become more and more experienced and seasoned as we continue working in the teaching profession and maybe get recognized by some awards, let’s not become complacent and arrogant about our performance. We should always learn from our students and encourage any feedback they have. And we should be happy when we hear from our students, because that gives us a wonderful chance to perform even better. For example, below is an email I once wrote in Spring 2023 to my students to encourage their critical comments on the way I led discussion sessions:
“I encourage you to share with me any feedback, suggestions, or anything you want to say to me as to the discussion logistics, my teaching style, etc. As much as I care about your experiences very much, we can never fix something that we don’t know. So, while I’ve received some favorable feedback which I’m very moved by, let me be clear that I also greatly appreciate any critical comments you may have. (Feel free to be anonymous by using another email address.) Let’s work together to provide each of you with the best learning experience in this course.”
Here’s another excerpt from an email to my students in Fall 2023, which alligns with many principals mentioned above:
“We have reached the midpoint of this semester. How’s everything going? As I mentioned many times in discussion, I particularly appreciate your critical feedback. I really do. Your feelings and experiences mean a lot to me. If you think anything about my teaching style or discussion modality is not working well or doesn’t fit your taste, please don’t hesitate to share it with me. I’ve added a column called “Feedback or Questions” in our “Discussion Plans” Google Sheets file, where you can post feedback or questions anonymously if you prefer not to email me directly. Then again, none of this is a task for you, so there’s not any extra pressure imposed on you.
Additionally, I may share course information such as quiz grading updates in the last column, “Ivan’s Personal Updates,” in the same Google Sheets file. The information there is not essential, so I prefer not to bombard you with emails about these trivial details. So, if you’re interested, you can regularly check that column.”
I think how a person reacts to criticism reflects a lot about their values and what they truly think. If our real intent is to become a great TA who puts our students’ interests and experiences first, then we should carefully and gratefully listen to criticism or feedback from students or cohorts. Each time we receive it, we should reflect on ourselves, aiming to reconcile differences and find the best solution. This is a wonderful opportunity for us to give our students the best experience. However, if we care more about our own teaching experience and career than about our students, we might shy away from these critical comments and blame them on others for not working hard or not appreciating our efforts. Therefore, if we want to be truly great educators recognized by our students, we should open our minds to all kinds of diverse opinions about ourselves, especially those critical comments, because they make us better educators.
Likewise, chances are there will always be students who don’t like the way you teach, no matter how hard you try. This is also great, because that means people are creative and diverse. We should always believe in the inclusiveness of humanity, and keep up our hard work in teaching well. Always remember, if we work hard, we shall do better. And our better work will be enjoyed by all our students, making their studying much easier (not harder!!) and thus bettering their learning experiences at this university and thus improving their lives. How rewarding and great that is! So, never let go of our passion, always reflect and learn from our students, and keep going!
Ivan Zhanhu Feng
Oct 14, 2022 (During Fall Break)
At Ronald Tutor Campus Center, USC
POSTSCRIPT
In addition to knowledge, as a teaching assistant, what I hope the most is to convey a sense of passion for math to my students. When we love math, learning it will become fun and attractive, and we will become more creative and innovative. While some teachers like to focus on a kind of macroscopic guiding where they constantly ignore the basics of math and leave most details to their students, I don’t believe in that teaching style at all. A person will be led by their interest and enthusiasm in math to set up a dream of pushing the math field forward and truly act on it, while such interest and enthusiasm in math, to a large extent, come from the joy and confidence they gain in understanding and applying math to solving problems, and the only way to gain such joy and confidence is to be able to comprehend the detailed logic in existing math knowledge, instead of being intimidated by its mysteriousness. Therefore, if their teacher can deliver such detailed logic to help them truly understand seemingly complicated math knowledge, then they will automatically earn a sense of control in math, which will offer them the best platform for exhibiting their creativity and the help they really need in pursuing their dreams. This is what I believe in, and this is what guides my teaching style. I’ve always tried to do that as a teacher, and I always will.
Last update: 5:19 PM on Jan 7, 2024
