New TAs (both graduate and undergraduate) meet with their corresponding Head TA every Friday afternoon to prepare for the following week’s lab. Usually, TAs for 2211 meet in CULC 372/362 and TAs for 2212 meet in CULC 373/375, and the meetings are usually at 4pm although the time can vary depending on everyone’s schedules.
After you’ve TA’d for one semester, you will not be required to attend all the Friday meetings. Returning TAs are always welcome at the meetings if they want to participate, and will actually be required to attend when there’s equipment that needs to be set up or taken down.
During the TA meetings, the Head TA will make any necessary announcements and lead the TAs into preparing for the next lab. The preparations can include, among other things:
- setting up and/or putting away lab equipment
- doing a group practice run through the experiment (and/or discussing its details)
- doing a group practice VPython coding session (and/or discussing its details)
- discussion of issues or problems that may have arisen in the previous week
- gathering stuff that the students have left behind that week to put in the “Lost and Found” (2211 students in particular appear to love losing their calculators)
- collecting graded quizzes/exams that have been left in the room (the Head TAs need to return these to the Academic Office in Howey W-111)
- grab all the scattered formula sheets and pile them up in one easily-accessible location
Note that this is not an exhaustive list, and not all of these things necessarily happen at every single TA meeting!
At every meeting, regardless of which lab prep is being done, the TAs should make sure that every lab station has a whiteboard, a marker, and an eraser. If any of these are missing, you should let the Head TA know so that he/she can pick up extras or ask Greco to order more supplies. Markers especially tend to run out rather quickly.
The “Lost and Found” is a cardboard box usually full of calculators, pens, pencils, notebooks, laptop chargers, sunglasses, etc. On one particularly memorable occasion it included a set of car keys. There are two such boxes, one for the 2211 labs and another for the 2212 labs.
The Head TA for each class is responsible for running these meetings, sending the GTAs and UTAs reminders and other information/materials when necessary, and communicating with Greco about any issues the TAs may have brought up during the meetings.