Word: tfs
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Dates: during 1986-1986
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Unlike professors, teaching fellows are not reviewed by the Core committee. At the beginning of each semester there is a desperate scramble for graduate students to lead sections in over-subscribed Core courses with courses advertising for TFs on department bulletin boards. Yet these last ditch section leaders provide the only personal instruction students get in large lecture courses. They are actually expected to steer the fine line between teaching a subject and teaching how to approach a subject...
AFTER HANDING BACK midterms, one Core section leader in a Core course commented that the exams were "pretty good for an intro course." All too often TFs like this one fail to realize that they are teaching almost exclusively non-concentrators who will never take another course in the field again...
...TFs ought to receive training on how to teach in the Core. They should also be screened far more thoroughly before they are hired. These measures would require more advanced planning on the part of professors and may even require restricted enrollments. If that's the price we have to pay, it's worth it. As it now stands, the Core teaches neither approaches to knowledge, nor knowledge itself, successfully...
Actually after writing all about term-paper heaven, the Hacker better say heaven is more a state of mind than a physical location. True confession: with or without a laserwriter, none of the Happy Hacker's TFs have ever described his papers as heavenly...
...important as to whether section leaders use students' names. This reflects a great deal on how well the TFs know individuals and how much attention the teachers are paying to students. In sections where names are used, there is more success...