Week 6:
This week was a bit of a headache due to the recent issues we have seen throughout the week. During this week we made it a point to sit down, as staff, and think about what we could do to improve our training for the TA’s next year. This summer’s institute we have been seeing a lot of issues surrounding the teaching assistants and I think this is because of our newly hired staff and their unfamiliarity of the program’s culture. I was able to write reviews surrounding this topic and I think the input from me as a former TA highlighted the understanding of what the TA to scholar relationship should be within the work place. I highlighted points about maintaining the leader to follower relationship in respect to having the end goal in mind. With these scholars the TA’s should encourage self efficacy that way they can become leaders within their own community. I think once the TA’s are able to do this the next few weeks should be smooth.
So, I get the ‘organizational culture’ category as you are critiquing, to some extent, the training that the TAs received and what they might be missing (understanding of program culture) based on how they were on-boarded this year. As for the ‘leader/follower’ category, I presume that this was selected as your are talking about the nature of the relationship that TAs and scholars develop; what that relationship should look like. As I read this, it seems like it addresses both ‘personal contributions’ – as you wrote reviews and are taking steps to remedy the issue – as well as ‘problem solving/improving leadership’ – as the team recognized a deficiency and took steps to address the issue (improving training).