u/Flashy_Review_162

The last few semesters I have been trying to stay away from ppts but for some algebra classes I feel it's easier to keep them and do worksheets and labs. I can teach the higher level classes without powerpoints to be honest. For a teaching evaluation of a Stat class, I thought I did well with active involvement by having a review game (I usually do do nows), taught partly from slides, then showed how to use R and went back to the review game as an exit ticket. I was told it would be better to streamline it but to be fair I had to teach a group of students I never met before. I've been teaching for years but I was curious if you mostly use powerpoints or you do variations like this too? I want to incorporate flipped classroom as well.

I just listened to the Bruh Meets World interview with the cast the other day and just putting this out there to manifest it to happen lol. They may have been joking about doing a few episodes of their version of Traitors with the BMW actors as their characters.

The idea of Traitors was very interesting to me and saw a few episodes but could never finish them. If the cast did it I'd love it! If you were to have the show, who would you like to see and what do you think would happen? Obviously Ben probably not do it but it would be cool to have Jensen, Danielle, Rider, Will, Matthew, Bill Daniels, Betsey, Trina, Russ. Maybe Maitland could come randomly (but she wouldn't be in on the joke or maybe that would make it more funnier lmao)

I didn't see any other comments on this on this subreddit but it would be so cool if even part of this happened!

To those of you who have PhD's, what is your honest opinion about us? I love teaching more than anything in the world and I lucked out and got a full time contract for a few years. I have some experience in the field too.

I've been adjuncting for years for a few colleges and also on the side have always applied to industry jobs too but never get a response(the tech industry is brutal and it feels at this point I'm typecast as Professor). I can't completely understand how the department I'm at views me. They seem very friendly but all PhD's. I go pretty far in interviews when I try to advance but I'm always at the second place. One time a few years ago I was told I didn't have enough business experience. Now that I'm in a more general program I'm too "business". No one would give me any feedback until months later until my boss basically first said it was the phd then said the business comment. It also just feels weird now, like they are almost embarassed or something. Which sucks since I love the job otherwise. I have a kid and I can't afford to do these interviews losing work at my other places, I'd rather know what it is than go through all this limbo but I can't say that.

Edit: I guess at the end of the day it's like a business. I have helped students with research, been part of competitions and different events. Universities just want to get the most money out of everyone. I am even thinking of writing a book on my experience. Would that help?

So I am fine now but I was completely shocked two semesters ago. I had this TA who was a former student of the department so I was expecting good things especially since she took the class before. She just had the biggest ego however and it affected everything.

She wouldn't understand how to grade and give students almost 0's. I teach Data Science so let's say there's 5 parts of an assignment. If the student got the first part wrong the whole assignment was a 0 even if they did considerable amount of work and everything else was correct. She even tried to gaslight me into thinking this is how things are done even though I've been teaching at this grad school for a long time.

She was hostile with students too and saying they were harassing her. In one specific situation, students were talking about following a step in the coding like "Filter out every oil company in Texas or something" and my TA gave 0 points because they included companies that could have been oil too. They were saying that there is a discrepancy in the English of it which she took as "she didn't know english".

I expected the TA to be a bridge between me and the students but I was their biggest protector. She also went behind my back talking to the other faculty it was humiliating but I stayed strong and I did tell my boss what I can do and I did my best working with them for a solution. I always stayed kind even when she was being very bitchy and had some talks about how i feel about teaching (think with passion and inspiration like Ted Lasso) but I just stopped after a while. She killed it on the last day of class though with final presentations and I made sure to tell her she did a great job on that.

Luckily I don't normally have TAs except for one grad class which I usually get to choose but it just shocked me. Even after years of teaching. I was so mad but didn't let it affect my teaching. I needed to show that I was the boss but in an effective way.

How do/did you deal with problematic TAs? I was one for many years and being that I'm an adjunct I'm always extra kind and patient until these situations happen!