| Earth, Moon and
the Planets (Fall 2001) Beyond the Solar System (Spring 2002) |
|
Teaching in astronomy at Columbia is a very unique experience.
What TAs conventionally do is helping students with problems or grading exams,
which also costs lots of time and energy. In addition to those duties, being a TA
in Columbia astronomy requires more than that: we grad students run astronomy labs
(for four semesters) as an instructor and we are asked to be "imaginative".
In our department, labs do not belong to astronomy classes that are taught by the faculty. Graduate students independently design their labs within a big subject of each semester (e.g. the Solar system in fall and extragalactic astronomy & cosmology in spring). Coming up with your own idea must be a less painful part; the students who take labs are mostly non-majors and unfortunately not many of them are highly motivated (even though they are really intellegent!). The lab schedule (three hours in the evening) makes the situation worse. Students get easily exhausted. So, instead of lecturing or providing problems to solve, we graduate students try to put more hands-on activities and initiate discussion (take a look of the Columbia astronomy lab page). We encourage students to keep thinking and share the thoughts with other students, which is more difficult for us than giving lectures. But we also learn a lot while we prepare for each lab and get to know students better in class. While I was teaching for a couple of years, I often ended up spending many hours in preparation, which gave me the idea that teaching is tough. But I had fun with my students and it was so rewarding when they asked me interesting questions. It was definitely worth experience. |