October 31, 2003

Can Graduate Students Be Taught How to Teach?

To the Editor:

There seems to be a variety of misconceptions in the posts to The Chronicle's online Colloquy about what is involved in a training program for teaching assistants ("The First Thing About Teaching," September 26). As someone who does this kind of work, I would break it down into: communication of subject material; document management; and classroom management and authority.

Communication of subject material is very important. As online posters have noted,