Recollections of the Past

The most valuable aid I have found in teaching is to remember my own experiences as a student. Being aware of the concerns of my students has improved my effectiveness as an instructor.

The teaching fellow establishes the atmosphere of a class in the first few meetings. I have found that students appreciate having the ground rules clearly defined from the start. By letting the class know exactly what is expected of them, the teaching fellow is saying, "I know you're concerned about these things and they're not trivial matters." However, understanding the concerns of a class does not mean being a lax instructor. The students I have come in contact with at Harvard are highly competent individuals who prefer to be challenged and respond well to encouragement.

A teaching fellow must be aware of the pressures that students face. Since students here are so strongly motivated, they will spend a tremendous amount of time on classwork, especially when they receive extensive feedback from their instructor. If the course load becomes too great, they may exhaust themselves or neglect other classwork.

The first classes I taught at Harvard were Natural Sciences 3 and Chemistry 4 (now known as the Chemistry 5 sequence). These were introductory courses for which I conducted a section and proctored a lab session. After the first laboratory of Nat Sci 3, I received reports that were of average quality for a beginning chemistry course. I spent a great deal of time going over the assignments, making suggestions, and describing in detail the topics that should be treated in a scientific report.

The next assignments the class turned in were substantially better. By continuing to elaborately comment on each lab assignment, I was able to see consistent improvement in the students' proficiency. Toward the end of the term some students were handing in work of graduate school quality.

While this was rewarding for me as an instructor, my conversations with students indicated that they were spending a disproportionate amount of time on the assignments. By putting so much effort into their section work, the students were beginning to neglect their other assignments. It was at this point that they needed a break. I was able to get my class excused from the final assignment because their previous work had been so exceptional. It is important for the teaching fellow to remain in touch with the class so that he will know when the students are reaching the saturation point. It is also usually easier for students to talk to their section leader than to the professor since the teaching fellow is generally closer in age and experience to the students. This allows the T.F. to serve as a link between the class and the professor.

The year in school of a student is another factor that affects how an instructor interacts with his or her class. Many of my students in introductory chemistry were freshmen, most of whom were away from home for the first time. In the often imposing structure of the university they appreciated having someone they could talk to about problems with school. When I taught Chemistry 106a, an upper-level quantum mechanics course, I found that though the older students do not need as much guidance, they still appreciate having clearly defined goals for the course and an instructor who understands the academic demands upon them.

But whatever the level of the course, when asked what I think is most important for a teaching fellow to know, my answer is to remember that it wasn't so long ago that we were there ourselves.

Catherine Asaro, who is a graduate student studying chemical physics, has worked as a teaching fellow in the Chemistry Department.