# 1 Time -- "As a WIP TA, how do I control time and paper?" 

First, recognize that time crunches are the nature of academic business. You can learn ways to manage your workload, such as recognizing the semester-basis of your job as a WIP TA, looking ahead, setting limits, and resisting the tendency to over-mark student writing. Above all, remember that your assistantship specifies nine hours per WIP course. Some weeks may require more; some less. In this nine hours you'll have to plot feedback time, conferencing time, office hours, some degree of preparation time, and possibly class attendance; however, all WIP duties should be doable in these nine hours. If not, let's talk. You may be over-responding or need to simplify the class paper load, class enrollment may be higher than recommended for a WIP course, or some adjustment in the assignment or feedback schedule may be helpful. 

While as a rule WIP TAs do not have the daily responsibility of preparing to teach a class, they do have the challenge of being responsive to a course's schedule, a schedule that they did not devise. You may have to turn student papers around quickly despite other commitments, and you may not be able to set or shift due dates. Some TAs report that an uneven workload that fluctuates depending upon when papers are due and escalates at the end of the semester is common. In 6910, we ask you to keep a weekly log of the time you spend on WIP matters and to turn it in regularly. TAs feel that this helps them to see where their time goes and how they might re-direct it. 
 

# 2 "Students do not come to conferences. How can I get them to?" 

One of the best ways is for faculty to require one or more conferences and to build them into the course design. This says that conferences are important and that students will get something out of them. In some WIP courses, students must come to see their TA to pick up their work or drafts. If mandatory conferences aren't feasible, only those who see the usefulness of getting feedback to improve their grade will come. Word of this benefit does eventually get around, but you should take every opportunity to let students know what you can do for them. Let your faculty member know if conferencing opportunities aren't being used or if you are not able to get feedback to students. It may be useful to give some type of point credit for conferences as well and to offer small group conferences, foregoing office hours one week and arranging a brief drop-in evening session. Most important, remember that conferencing is one of many ways to give the feedback we believe is important to the writing process; think of conferences as part of your total teaching mix, and consider that they may not be workable in all WIP courses. 
 

#3 - "I don't have background in the course I'm supporting. How can I respond to writing without knowing course material?" 

While we work to assign TAs to courses in their fields or closely related ones, it is not always possible to make such assignments. However, even if you are working out of your field as a TA, you should have confidence in your ability to provide feedback as an academic reader. Not being familiar with the content of a course can actually be an advantage because it may lead you to ask non-obvious questions that give students a chance to explain their choices. The key thing is to use your judgment on sensitive content issues and to refer questions to faculty when you can't answer questions confidently. This reinforces the collegial, collaborative, team approach with which the WIP approaches writing at all levels. You will be able to deal with most development, organization, and sentence-level issues though, and you will want to avoid separating yourself from the course content unnecessarily by sending students the message that you are just there to deal with the writing, as if it were separate from the content of the course. 
 

#4 -- Student resistance: " Why do I need to write like a music historian or a sociologist? I've changed majors three times! I don't even have a major now!" 

Admittedly, WIP emphasis on the kinds of thinking and writing that students will do as professionals has more currency with majors and upper division undergraduates. But WIP interest in teaching disciplinary conventions for writing has an element that makes it important to all students, even though WIP courses aim to bring the specific conventions of a field to the fore. That common element is "academic writing " in SAWE (Standard American Written English). 

Even if a WIP course consists mainly of non-majors or only a few majors, instructors can still emphasize features of effective academic writing in certain contexts. You can help students identify some of the common features of contemporary academic writing (not students' ideas of academic writing, which tend to make it into some pretentious, convoluted thing). 

Addressing student motivation in a WIP course or any other is a complex undertaking. Attitudes toward writing are often conflicted, if not mainly negative. Furthermore, students think that a course that asks them to write is likely to mean a lower grade. However, giving students a chance to write without being graded and to make mistakes that they can revise, along with explaining the benefits of writing in the disciplines courses and the purposes of writing assignments, go a long way toward helping students think differently about writing. Students in WIP course often report that their attitude or their approach to writing tasks changes as they gain confidence in using the writing process. Over the past three years, resistance to writing in WIP courses has diminished considerably, according to student surveys. 
 

# 5 Authority -- "I'm only a teaching assistant. How do I get students to respect my feedback?" 

This is not a problem unique to the WIP. Teaching assistants in all kinds of courses tend to feel as if they are in some academic nether-world, not students but not teachers either. How a faculty member introduces and relates to you in a class helps establish your authority. Having worked with teaching assistants before, WIP faculty know that you can provide more support in a course if students trust your contributions and see their TA as one of the benefits of the course. You can also take steps to create authority in the course you are supporting by means of your professional attitude, constructive spirit, specific feedback, and commitment to following through on promises or agreements. Sometimes, such a climate takes a while to build, but by the time WIP students respond to course surveys, they tend to praise their teaching assistants for improving their writing and taking the time to teach them things they had never learned before. 
 

#6 Conflicts -- "What should I do if there is a serious problem with a student, in attitude, preparedness, willingness to work, or some other issue?" 

Go to your faculty member and follow his or her lead. We have regular trouble-shooting sessions in ENGL 6910 to help you anticipate problem scenarios and have responses ready when they relate to writing. However, faculty need to make decisions about any serious issues that might influence a student's experience in a class or the class as a whole. 
 

#7 Feeling under-utilized - "I'm not able to use all that I learn as a WIP TA." 

While it's more common to hear of TA concern over having too much to do and too many student needs to respond to, there may be times when you feel that there's not enough of an opportunity to apply all that you learn about writing in the disciplines. Granted, your training is at a faculty level, and thinking about the relations between teaching and writing tends to re-inspire faculty who have been teaching for a long time. Your training as a WIP TA will enhance your teaching in any discipline, and it will improve your own writing skills. 

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Franklin College

Department of English

Michelle Ballif