It’s right around this time – about a month into my first semester – that I began to wonder whether I was at all sure about how to be a student, a teacher, and a student teacher all at once. Certain events had tested my confidence – namely, certain things going wrong.

I tend to agree with Mark Pijl Zieber that mistakes, if taken as opportunities for reflection and improvement, are often the best learning experiences. As we’ve written about here before, just about every teacher makes mistakes. Even so, there’s nothing worse for a new GA/TA than a crisis of confidence. Student teachers and researchers already feel the need to work harder to gain respect and credibility in their field, and when a setback occurs, feelings of inadequacy tend to creep in quickly.

What Is Impostor Syndrome?

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that there are some days that, in your private moments, you question whether you’re really GA/TA material. If you’re like me, there are likely days you question whether you’re really cut out for higher education at all. The University of Waterloo’s Centre for Teaching Excellence summarizes these feelings through Joan Harvey’s work on the impostor syndrome (IP).

It’s pretty easy to feel like an impostor when you’re just learning the ins and outs of your area of specialization. The same goes for your first time teaching or working in a lab. Sometimes the wealth of knowledge and criticism that came before us makes it seem impossible to ever be a fully informed scholar in the field. Other times the thought of dealing with 20 or more strong personalities in leading a tutorial or lab or holding office hours is paralyzing. Most often, the two feelings run together, as in “I barely know anything about my field, so how can I lead others in their learning?” Feeling like an impostor as a GA or TA is very much about feeling unprepared, ill-suited, and/or lost in your role, and how you see yourself in that role can be influenced by any number of things.

A Portrait of a Teaching Assistant As A Young Scholar

Sandi-Urena, S., & Gatlin, T. (2013). Factors contributing to the development of graduate teaching assistant self-image. Journal of Chemical Education 90 (10), 1303-1309.
DOI: 10.1021/ed200859e

A teaching assistant’s self-image is a complex thing. While studying graduate teaching assistants in chemistry, Santiago Sandi-Urena and Todd Gatlin found that a nexus of factors including training, student experiences, ideology, beliefs about academic work, and the conditions of the learning environment influence a teaching assistant’s self-image. The question then becomes, how many of these factors can we control in ourselves? Maybe “control” is the wrong idea altogether, but we have to ask ourselves what role we as GAs/TAs play in determining how the factors affecting our development influence us at all. For instance, how deeply do we delve into our own student experience? How often do we actively question our own assumptions about the inner workings of our places of work – the lab, the archive, the community, etc.? What role do we play in shaping the learning environment around us? As the diagram above suggests, the way these factors influence each other is pretty complicated, with a whole lot of reflexivity and counter-influencing and cyclical relations transpiring. What we can take away from this is to be mindful of the fact that who we are as GAs/TAs – and who we see ourselves as, specifically – is influenced by a great number of factors that each need careful, critical reflection.

Seizing Control Of Your Role

No one’s saying it’s easy to get over a crisis of confidence. First and foremost, reach out for help: discuss your concerns with a colleague, or your supervisor, or a councillor at the Student Counseling Centre. Take advantage of opportunities within the GATA Network and the CTL for personal and professional development. You might also try these suggestions when trying to reassert yourself as a GA/TA:

• Read ahead of the class. Far be it for me to tell you to do more work on top of all of the work you already do, but there really is something to be said for knowing what comes next. You don’t have to know everything about the class you’re supporting, but you should have an idea of where it’s going. Try to stay a few weeks ahead on class readings, and make sure you’re clear about the overall structure of the course timeline. This should keep you prepared for general questions from students and help show how knowledgeable you are.
• Embrace the role of facilitator. There’s a big difference between lecturing and facilitating. It’s very rare that a GA/TA is asked to lecture – stand up in front of the class for long periods of time and explain/describe the material at length. Chances are that your role really requires you to facilitate learning by getting students engaged in the course material. This means leading productive discussions, planning interesting activities, and directing students to the proper resources. There are plenty of ideas on how to facilitate learning in the “Active Learning” section of the GATAcademy 2015 Program. Take some pressure off of yourself by forgetting the big, sage-like displays of everything you know about the topic, and start approaching each meeting with your students as a way to get them talking about what they know.
• Maintaining the boundaries. Of course we never want to limit students in their learning, but we can all agree that there need to be limits in a course. That means limits to student behaviour, limits to your availability, limits to how you interact with students, limits within the course structure. Being firm and maintaining professional boundaries with your students is definitely important, but so is sticking to the course and assignment parameters. I’m not saying flexibility is a bad thing – indeed, it’s necessary, as your best lesson plans will often go awry – but other boundaries like deadlines and rules of conduct need to be treated consistently in an effective learning environment. Rick Sheridan has his own tips for regaining control in the classroom, including the private intervention and the power of non-verbal communication.

Tell Us Your Worries

What are some of the barriers you’ve encountered in your early days of GA/TA experience? Share your challenges below in the comment section.