She came into class with good intentions. A TA, with a heart of gold and a head of heavy brass.
She was studying the institution of families. Family across time. Gender roles in families. Definitions of families and how sometimes a best friend can seem closer than blood. What makes "family" anyway? So she came in to her first teaching assistantship armed with political material on women and families. Because, you know, relevant. To her.
Except that only one political party had materials on this subject, the role of women and families. So she, brand new TA, handed out political materials printed off of the campaign website for only one party. (sigh) In direct violation of the state laws concerning politcking from the lectern.
That was a lot of administrative work for me. The College Republicans threatened law suits. Damn it. We tried balancing it out, we accommodated the CRs but it was a pain in my ass. Allowing them to respond. Christ. She watched from afar, feeling guilty, while I spun circles of excuses. We got through it.
Her heart was tarnished but still pure gold. A student began to struggle. And she reached out. Oh, student, how art thou? she asked.
The student responded in snowflakey terms. Oh life. How miserable it is. My friends, my significant other, my dorm, my family. I feel overwhelmed. Some days, I wonder how I can get out of bed at all. TA, you asked and I must respond: Is Life Worth Living??? TA won't you tell me if I should stay alive?
And my TA, a dear with weighed-down metal heart of gold, grew concerned. She called the police. My Student! My student is suicidal!! Do something, Police! (are you kidding me?)
The Student was dually committed against their will. The Student was indeed overwhelmed. The student began to talk, aloud, alone, about revenge against the TA. What a bitch, committing me against my will?! She has ruined ALL. She must PAY. I have plans. I WILL FIND HER. I will show her!!
My TA became scared. Crap, so did I. Student knew our location a good 4 hours a week, and involuntary commitment lasted all of 72 hours. We had police stationed at the doors of lecture from point the student was released so we could avoid Student shooting our shit up.
I'm not kidding, people. It was freaky. Who wants to touch this kind of atmosphere with a stick of beer bottles? NO ONE. Imagine how great my lectures were. And discussion. Oh YEAH.
But Student withdrew and moved to California to live with a long-lost father. We breathed a sigh of relief.
Perhaps this TA has gained confidence and wisdom in the past 3 years. Maybe she is a good, well-rounded, reasonable lecturer. But a fairly reputable University has just asked me to appraise her performance so that they can decide whether to offer her a tenure track position. And I am at a loss.
Because she broke two crazy cardinal rules:
1) DON'T POLICK AT THE SNOWFLAKES
2) DON'T COMMIT THE SNOWFLAKES TO COUNTY PSYCH WARDS AGAINST THEIR WILL
Come on. What would you say??
"Tallulah TA is extremely involved with her students.
ReplyDeleteExtremely.
New paragraph blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Sincerely,
Professor FrogToad"
If somebody calls or emails asking, you do not have to return the call or reply to the email. If they call or email again, you still do not have to respond. Ad nauseam....
ReplyDeleteBut if you reply, be honest.
Or maybe that should be "ad infinitum...."
ReplyDeleteOr both?
I would say that's a really good argument against a system that allows that kind of thing to happen. As in: "I just have a B. A. and I don't know shit about research but now look I have a whole class to teach, or lectures to give, or papers to grade, etc. etc. etc. Wheeeeee!"
ReplyDeleteUtter stupidity. But the whole university system thrives on it. 22-year-olds that got B.A.s three months before and have zero teaching experience are given their own class to teach. Or set loose to grade the papers of students they might have shared classes with three months before.
Lunacy. And as this system shows no sign of evaporating anytime soon, it's up to the professor checking diligently as to what the t.a. plans to do in class, as in "I need to make sure what what you're doing with the students meets my approval." Or observe personally every class the student teaches, so that if the prof doesn't catch it beforehand, they will catch it as it happens and blunt the damage done.
Respond to the university seeking your opinion: "My experience with Tallulah TA was years ago, at the beginning of her graduate career. Since then, she surely has grown so much that my assessment would be irrelevant to her current performance."
ReplyDeleteThen track down Tallulah and teach her another cardinal rule: ASK PEOPLE BEFORE YOU LIST THEM AS REFERENCES.
"Before applying for a position, it's generally considered good form to ask former employers if they would be able to serve as references. Frankly, I'm not your best choice since (1) I'm not your most recent supervisor and (2) that semester was, of course, disastrous.
Best of luck,
Professor Monkey"
Or, as Captain Subtext would translate, "You listed ME as a reference? What were you thinking?"
She should have called the counseling office, rather than the police. Her error must have been irritating, but should you screw her out of a job? Probably not. Better that she was too cautious than careless.
ReplyDeleteWas there anything she did well? If she asked you for a letter, she must remember something positive about the experience.
I remember getting a reference request like this a few years ago. The student in question was, shall we say, in the tail of the distribution (and not the good tail). But the request came not from a faceless bureaucracy I could ignore, but from a friend, just starting a new job, and for whom hiring such a flake could have been disastrous. Eventually I decided on a reply something like...
ReplyDeleteI cannot respond in an official capacity because Norman Numnutz did not contact me to ask for a reference. Indeed, even had he done so, it would not have been able to provide one.
Then I winked very slowly and obviously. I figure that if my friend hired Mr. Numnutz after that, it was his fault.
The worst case scenario I've run into was friends who hired a student without bothering to ask for a reference which the student would certainly not have gotten. The story has an unhappy ending - the student lost the job for reasons predictable to the previous instructors, and the institution lost the position.
ReplyDeleteMiss Heart of Gold is a different case; her mistakes are partly the error of "caring too much" common in new instructors, and laudable. But the rest of her mistakes are the less laudable "inability to take supervision, or even ask her supervisor what she should do in a difficult situation". Is she still like that?
Not that I think you should do her out of a job. She may well have learned a lot in the last few years; usually they do. Tell her to get another referee, I think.
ReplyDeleteThat's a tough one. The person I'm 'mentoring' is a reactionary T-T faculty member. She emailed me yesterday claiming someone had completely trashed her on Facebook. When I looked at the entry, it read "Can't bear to go to class tomorrow." Um... overreacting, anyone? Your TA sounds like many immature young people I see who overreact and inflate things to suit their need for drama.
ReplyDeleteThat said... if you aren't willing to be completely honest about your opinion, then I'd rate her based on how much she has grown to show that you have some reservations but think she has potential (if that's true). While she did those things at the beginning, is she still behaving in such a manner? Were these isolated instances when things snowballed and, therefore, seemed larger than they were simply because of circumstances rather than because of her actions? Is her teaching stellar? Is there anything you can say that's GOOD about her? If not, then don't.
I would decline to give a reference.
ReplyDeleteI once gave a positive recommendation to a professor about another of my fellow graduate students whom I only knew very casually but who seemed to be a suitable and enthusiastic person for the job.
Turns out this person had/has a serious drinking problem, a prescription-drug addiction, and possibly an undiagnosed psychiatric disorder. This student remains the only person I have yet known who has gotten fired (by said professor) from a TA position, and I did a lot of apologizing in that professor's office for my unwise recommendation.
Is it possible just to confirm that you were the student's supervisor?
ReplyDeleteThere's really no excuse for the "politicking" or handing out the materials of one political party and not the other. On the plus side, she may have saved a student's life by having her involuntarily committed.