Recource for Teaching Assistance

YZU Teaching Assistant

Goals

Teaching Assistants (TA) work may have certain responsibilities for a particular faculty. One of the main goals of a Teaching Assistant is to help raise educational standards in the classroom, by providing support to the students, the teacher and the school.

Objectives:

With the supports of teaching assistants team to run these training courses, we are looking forward to gain better qualities in our pedagogies. Meanwhile these courses are focused in 3 sections, which are administration training program, digital resources training program and profession improvement program. Featuring selected seminars and teaching experiences sharing discussions available. Besides, with the supports from IT department, teaching services unit to show the method of using digital media available in the classroom, we are sure applicants may gaingreat improvements in their own profession.

Potential applicants:

Teaching assistants from each unit (including Teaching Excellence Creativity Project, Teaching Excellence (Teaching English TA program) Project), schools’ teaching assistants, technical supporters and tutors who are interested are mostly welcome.

Responsibilities & Functions

Teaching Assistants' classroom responsibilities and functions can range from performing routine tasks, such as getting things ready for lessons, putting up displays around the school or classroom, helping the teacher to maintain records, marking tests, administrative tasks (photocopying, collecting dinner money etc), to sometimes working with individual students if necessary. The working time is usually during school hours and often, and is paid based on working-hours.

Skills and Interests

To be a teaching assistant, candidates should:

Ø Enjoy working with students and be interested in education.

Ø Be able to build good relationships with students, careers, and teacher.

Ø Be able to work well under the supervision of a teacher and enjoy working as part of a team.

Ø Be willing to be flexible and creative.

Ø Have a high English level (for English courses).

Ø Have good literacy and numeracy skills.

Ø Be patient but firm when necessary.

Eligibility

There are no set entry requirements. However, candidates normally need to be at least 20 years old. An understanding of English and math is important in order to support classroom literacy and numeracy. For English courses a high English level will be required, the candidate can provide a test of proficiency (TOEFL, TOEIC, IETLS), if not, this can be determined through an oral or written exam. International students may serve as TA’s as long as they provided the proper paperwork; in this case, ARC and work permit will be required. It’s also important to have some ‘‘classroom management skills’’ in order to keep a good classroom behavior for lessons to run smoothly.

Teaching assistants and teachers should set aside time for planning, review and evaluation to ensure effective co-operation between staff members, resulting in a consistent standard of work and behavior being expected from students.

From a practical perspective, teaching assistants should make themselves aware of all classroom rules and routines to ensure consistent enforcement of these rules.
TA’s can greatly improve the quality of teaching by dealing effectively with minor behavioral issues, allowing the class teacher to focus on teaching the whole class. This will enable the teacher to organize the work of individuals and groups more precisely to match students of different abilities. Teaching assistants must ensure that their subject knowledge is sufficiently deep to extend students learning and should be able to interact effectively with the teacher, maintaining students’ interest and making for challenging discussion. In this way, the quality of the overall learning experience is enhanced, allowing students to maximize their potential.

Higher Level Teaching Assistants (PhD) have more responsibility. Their duties can include:

Ø Working alongside teachers to support learning activities

Ø Helping to plan lessons and prepare teaching materials

Ø Assessing, recording and reporting on the progress of students they work with

Ø Acting as specialist assistants for particular subjects

Ø Supervising the class in teachers' absence

Ø Supervising other support staff.

Credentials:

About 16 hours in total for the whole program, applicant who takes part after 12 hours out of 16 hours may receive a Teaching Assistant Testimony upon participation, and respective testimonial will have priority in future application of teaching assistant.

Regulation & Form:

For more details, please contact: Teaching Excellence Center (1711R)/ Ms. Chiu ext. 3204