TA: Above my pay scale excuses

Hey guys.  So this is a segment I have deemed to call "above my pay scale."  The excuse types found herein are true examples of things that not only make you go "oh mercy" but are just viable enough so you can't ignore them or are long running issues that you'd like to run from.

Student A (not student A from last week): Student was missing from the first 2 weeks of class, which if you're teaching a lab, only meets once a week, so that's a significant proportion of class time as it is. So, after taking role and marking him absent I assumed he dropped and crossed his name off my paper roster (TAs are almost NEVER EVER given updated rosters. EVER.)  About half way through my mini lecture of course, guess who comes strolling in?  Right, so I tell him he needs to see me after class and carry on, can't spend precious class time on someone who doesn't think class time is precious right? So after class he comes up and asks what I need. REALLY?!  You can't possibly imagine why I would want to talk to you?!  So I ask him why he's missed class so much.  Are you ready?  Turns out he was TAing another class during this same timeslot so he needed to get that fixed before abandoning his class to come to mine.  I ask if he had spoken to our Lab Coordinator (LC).  Of course, he said no, he didn't think he had to.  I had to stare for a moment, thinking you teach and you still thought you didn't need to let anybody know why you were missing class.  I told him he was unexcused until he talked with the LC.  He said nah, he'd pick it up.  Yeah okay whatever buddy, do as you wish, you're now above my pay scale to argue with.



Student B:  Student B had pre-emailed me (good girl) that her mom had a medical emergency and she needed to miss that week's classes. I gave her the go ahead (I'm a momma's girl myself).  After THREE weeks of no communication she comes in to take the final lab practical.  She's obviously allowed to take the test and I ask her to see me after, wondering how she was even going to complete the exam with half of the lessons completely missing.  After class she has the last 3 weeks homework assignments (given to her by friends) and a note from her mom that read, "XXX was home with me. I fully expect her to be responsible for her missing work."  So, after the 8th grade, that kind of note means NOTHING, but she was a good student so I tried to humor the situation.  I asked her what was going on and that I needed something more substantial.  I told her I believed there was something real to her absence but I couldn't be favoring her by going on her word.  She told me her mom was sick and it wasn't her place to talk about it.  They didn't go to the doctor so she only had her mom.  At this point I assume her family was under a delicate situation and likely there was some mental illness at check here.  Still, it broke all my University Sanctioned rules to run with it.  I took the first homework, from when I had given her the go ahead to miss.  I told her very seriously to just talk to the LC.  If I get the go ahead from her then I would love to grade the other homeworks.  The student backed off and said she didn't want to start a fuss.  I told her I didn't have the power to say okay but the LC did, and that I believed what she told me. She said she'd think about it.  She didn't.  This was painful because I still believe something was wrong but at my level I'm not allowed to make decisions like that without any sanctioned excuse.  She still passed, but two zeros did some damage.



I've got more to come for next week, and I've only been teaching 3 years. If you've got any good stories or insights SHARE!!!


"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful." Samuel Johnson

TA: excuse note stories

Ah excuses, easily the biggest bane of any teacher's existence, ever.  And at the college level, we've gone well beyond, "The dog age my homework."  The tales you will hear will range from the astonishing, to downright infuriating.  Of course they're not all lies, but even the truth tellers tend to go out of their way to make things messy.



Firstly, every year you will always have at least one student e-mail you the DAY a major paper is due or a test will occur.  Always.  And it's always some variant of "I'm so busy I didn't have time to do it!"  Normally my rule is, if you came to me with a legitimate issue BEFORE said date, I will probably roll with it if it doesn't start too many issues.  Examples of complete inability of students to follow this philosophy:

1. Student A shattered his dominant arm mid week that a paper was due.  You don't really need a note for this, they show up with a cast.  So I gave him an extension to go down to disabilities resources and get help with writing.  Easy!  If he had told me the day of or day before though, hell to the no.  You shouldn't be writing the paper 2 hours before class anyway and putting if off until then certainly doesn't earn you an extension.  Of course, this kid ended up turning it in later than the extension date anyway so he still could have lost points.  Round two had no excuse besides, "I forgot!"  Regardless the paper was terrible so the score was low enough that not only could I tell he'd written in that Saturday to turn it in in the middle of the night (it was due Friday) but I couldn't even justify taking off an additional 20%.
2. Student B sends me an e-mail after hours on a Friday. She states that she is leaving for a conference in an adjoining state with her club and won't be back until late Tuesday, therefore missing the field trip we have on Monday. She says she will go to the Thursday class. So, I have two major issues with this e-mail.
1. It's a conference, which means you knew about it more than 12 hours in advance so either you are lazy and didn't bother to use a pre-excuse as an actual pre-excuse or you fibbing. I made her show documentation so it was legit, but seriously, she's known since the first week of school, what?
2. I HATE (hate hate hate hate hate) when students skip the request stage and immediately assume they can jump in where ever or just get the notes and that's just fine and dandy. As a student you are SUBORDINATE. You have to ask. And in this case we had full classes so she couldn't just pop on to another day, there wasn't room in the vans. 
3. The first week of school contained labor day, so Monday labs were missed. However, the instructor decided that all safety training needed to be done that week. Therefore the students needed to hop in to one of the other 3 labs that week or to my extra session on Friday. Student Splinter Group C ignored the requirement and the very important step of TELLING ME. 
1. Did I mention all I require is communication? You know that first day whether you will have issues or not. It's like the pre-excuse, I just don't care as much when you show me you don't either!! 
2. Anyway, I digress. Come the following Monday I had 7 students who had not only missed training the last week but ignored even talking to me about it in class. I held them after and asked why they skipped. The average response? "I just got the information from somebody else taking the class." 
3. So...I was pretty sure I hadn't certified anyone else to do safety training. I told them training is more of a piece of paper and I needed them in the training with a signature of completion if they wanted to stay in class. Furthermore, since they skipped class without discussion they received an unexcused absence.
4. I actually had a student tell me she couldn't e-mail me because she didn't have access to the internet. Apparently for 7 days. I asked if she had been on campus at all, since we have free computer access. What I didn't ask was if her legs were broken so she couldn't walk up to the instructor's or my office either, the location of which were given in lecture multiple times. Miraculous healing she must have had.

 

Next week I'll post some more serious excuse situations. Have some good stories of your own? Let me know!!

"The history of our race, and each individual's experience, are sown thick with evidence that a truth is not hard to kill and that a lie told well is immortal." Mark Twain 

TA: tips and tricks of the trade

Now I want to start this off by reminding you that this in no way is the perfect set of rules for a TA.  Every TA is different, and so is every class, course, professor, student, and coordinator.  Take them with a grain of salt and use them carefully!

I'm going to spend this week going through a list of dos and don'ts.  Definitely question, comment, and add on!  I always love these conversations!!

DOs:

1. Be energetic.  
1. Students can smell weakness and feed on it like the brain slugs from Animorphs.  Sound confident and it really does go a long way.  
2. My first year teaching I was driving a van load of students to a lake field trip.  Along the way they said they could tell that it was Nematobrycon's first time teaching (the other TA, also female).  Of course I told them it wasn't and that she deserved respect, teaching wasn't easy.  Truth was though they had us backwards, I was the noob and Nematorbrycon was a seasoned veteran so to speak.  The difference is I am loud and bouyant while she is quiet and short on speech, lending her to look unsure of herself regardless of her competence. 
2. Be engaging.
1. Every chance to get to bring in student participation, do it.  If nothing else they'll be less likely to fall asleep.  It also helps to get a good feel for students and to learn names.  Teach Socratically.  The goal remember is to teach them how to learn, so by giving them some basics you can help them through just about anything.  
1. Use candy as a bribe, that works.  Just make sure they know they can't eat it until they leave (no food in labs ya?). 
2. My coordinator also recommends "danger colors." I've never had to employ this method but basically you draw a color randomly and go around the room so anyone with that color on will have to answer. Depends on the students I think how well they would respond.
3. Speak and write confidently.
1. Give the students assurance that you know what you are babbling on about. Even if you feel like it's a weak subject for you, prewrite your board work and think about what you say. Fumble around or need to change something on the board and you will lose them fast. Super fast.

Don'ts

1. Never say "Try harder"
1. Seriously, never say this. Chances are the student is trying to their capacity (whatever that is) and even if they're not it's a very frustrated piece of advice. You look like a complete pompous douchebag and they will likely stop trying altogether and feel you are entirely unapproachable. Which you are.
2. Never say " I don't know"
1. Even if you don't know, there are other ways to handle the situation that doesn't make them lose their faith in you.
1. Try attacking it socratically, can you think through it together?
2. Is it really pertinent? If not say that's above the level required for the course and in an effort to stay on track let it slide for now. After class, look it up and have it open for THEM as a resource.
2. Does it matter? Are they asking what the obscure stuffed animal in the corner is that was likely extinct 400 years ago? Then a "mmm I'm so sure on that one" is probably just fine.
3. HOWEVER, NEVER EVER LIE to your students. For one they take what you say is truth and you can severely harm their learning. Moreover if they figure out you fibbed you lose all their confidence AND, again, you look like a pompous douchebag, albeit an incompetent one.
3. Never let students run the joint.
1. Some freedom in a lab setting is great, it teaches responsibility and add comfort to their learning process, allowing them to focus more. Some informality at this level works too, be friendly and you'll likely get more active discussion. However, there will come a time when you need to stomp on a student. Be sure that when push comes to shove no means no. Some of them will tests boundaries, make sure you set a solid example.
4. Stay away from "wrong"
1. Especially if you are in a discussion moment within the lecture and asking for feedback, telling a volunteer straight out they are wrong can slow the discussion down dramatically. Make sure to smile and keep a positive flow. Say things like "well that's a good start" or "okay what it we thought about it this way." Try to redirect without spurning their attempt.

That's a solid review. Drop in your questions and comments and we can add more. Next week I think some funny horror stories to bring in the realism!

"Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theater." Gail Godwin

Teaching: Rules of survival as a TA

Okay, back again from a trip home.  Remember my family lives out of state from me.  Classes started today so back to the old grindstone and back to weekly posts.  We've done a lot of learny learny so let's take a break and talk about something else!

While in grad school one of the ways you're likely going to draw a paycheck is by being assigned as a T.A., or teaching assistant.  In the sciences, this generally means you run a lab and/or a tutoring session.  In total you will likely hold class about 6 hours a week, plus grading, plus classroom preparation, plus running open lab times and office hours.  They'll pay you for about 20 hours a week.  Let's just say you get very quick at grading.  I personally LOVE teaching.  Even when classes are at their worst.  This week I'm going to walk you through how a standard week for a science TA goes.  Next week I'm going to clean house with some nice do's and don't tips to help you along your journey.  This is a great topic for questions or experiences.

A week of teaching actually starts the week before.  At the end of the previous week you'll meet with your TA coordinator, your other TAs (usually anywhere from 2 to 6 of you total) and, rarely, the professor who teaches the lecture portion of the course.  You'll spend a little time making sure there weren't any major issues and the rest of the time getting the handouts and outline for the lab next week.  Although the coordinator will go over major chunks of material and go over pitfalls, they will not be teaching you the material.  Whether it's rusty, or even a little new, it is your responsibility to learn the material.  Don't panic though, you've already been through college and aside from some crap you were forced to learn that you DON'T remember there is a real benefit.  As I try to tell my own students, it's not about what you can memorize, it's about how you build your tool box that will allow you to tackle any problem that any teacher throws at you.  You absolutely have the ability to teach yourself just about anything and certainly have enough base knowledge to hack it.  I recommend making a detailed outline of the information you have to cover.  Not only will it ensure that you don't miss any major points when giving your talk but it will also make a good, discreet resource if you get a tougher question.

Alright, so then the week of teaching you'll have 2-3 sections you teach.  I personally like to break them up over the week, other TAs prefer to compound it up and do them all in a row and be free.  It's a balance and you need to decide what makes you the most comfortable.  So you teach and I won't go into any detail here and will go into lengthy tips and advice next week.  Before the end of the week you will also have to have 2-3 hours of office time, usually over 2 days throughout the week.  This makes for great grading time as students tend not to show up so much to these.  They come a lot right before the test and right at the end of the semester-aka times you don't care that they are trying to squeak by.  You do get a few good ones who put forth the effort.  I've used this time in the past to bring in students that need a talking to as well.  Generally in lower level courses but when I've flagged cheating or plagiarism I use this time to talk to the student face to face.  We'll talk more on this later, both in tips and as a particular horror story of mine.


Regardless of what method you use and how the semester goes, the best thing I can say is KEEP A PAPER TRAIL. If a student has an excuse, print out the email or photocopy it.  If you give extensions, write it down.  While you're grading, on your master sheet make note of what you accepted and what got half credit.  Post reminders on open lab times or office hours.  There will always be one student who will say "well my friend wrote basically the same thing on his test and got credit" or " I didn't know you had time for us to look at the specimens again!" Make sure if they run crying to the coordinator that you have something that shows, yes you did.  Then it's the coordinator's problem and likely WAY above your pay scale to deal with.  More on this next week!


"For every person who wants to teach there are approximately thirty people who don't want to learn--much."
W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman

Speciation II: isolationism-ishy

Let's continue to think on and discuss this issue of speciation.  As opposed to the genetic concept, which we discussed last time, we're going to look at the other two popular versions of the biological concept and the ecological concept.  Hang tight!

The biological species concept is one of the more well known models and although it centers around several pieces of evidence, the core piece deals with reproductive isolation.  We've discussed this idea a little in the past when talking about the African Cichlid fish and again last time, in part, with the ring species example.  This isolation however, has many parts to it.  For the sake of simplicity, we'll talk about two general sections

1. Pre-zygotic isolation: Isolation that occurs before the completion of the zygote.  At the risk of over-generalizing and simplifying we'll refer to this as pre-mating.  These are the things most people think of-mate choice, mate and species recognition, behavior, etc.
2. Post-zygotic isolation: This isolation is a little less well known and can be a little more difficult to understand.  These are isolations that occur AFTER mating, basically penalties for poor mate choice.  Generally these refer future of the offspring.  This can be things like zygote mortality, sterile young (cannot produce offspring of their own like a mule), or a poor mix of adaptations (mom is adapted to one and dad is adapted to another and the middle ground isn't well adapted to anything).

The thing I want to reinforce here is that speciation is in fact a PROCESS by which species come about.  Usually you see these species first experience some post-zygotic isolation that will be reinforced by pre-zygotic isolation.  Generally a species isn't truly called until there is no survival of any young and that there is no choice mating between the different populations. 

Now the ecological concept seems a little more straight forward.  The idea here is that the species experience isolation based on their ecological niche, things like habitat choice, nesting, food choice, life-cycle and timing.  An example would be birds that choose marshier habitat and those that choose higher ground, dry habitat.  Different habitat and attracting different partners, thusly reducing the change of cross breeding.  Here you consider that the species are now filling (or starting to fill) different ecological roles.  

As you can imagine as straight forward as this can be (to breed or not to breed) there is a lot of space for haziness too.  With a shifting environment and climate you can be on the brink of isolation and suddenly end up with hybrids between the populations that are even more well adapted than either of their parents.  There are plenty of cases where, as with the ring species example, although you can identify clear separate species, they are not finite and have hazy zones in the long line that got them there.  So where do we draw the line?  If we are more strict we lose the potential to understand discrete ecological impacts and in some cases destroy chances of species or populations of receiving government protection because they they don't qualify under endangerment laws.  If we are more flexible with our definitions we get widespread confusion and, as some birders and avian biologists can tell you, infinite updates on what species are and which are mere groups.  And, as I mentioned in the last speciation post, you get some cranky extreme creationists that run with it like it's on fire.  So what do you think?  What is a species?

Feel free to post with your comments, this is a controversial and ever changing topic! I'm happy to discuss! I have the book I referenced and some additional sources from a class I took!

Until next time!

"It is by universal misunderstanding that all agree. For if, by ill luck, people understood each other, they would never agree." Charles Baudelaire

Speciation: What the and the why hows??

Speciation (process of species forming) seems simple enough on the surface.  Over time adaptation and evolution drive a divergence between two populations.  Let's take a population of birds.  The population splits as it colonizes around a large mountain range.  As each subset of the original population colonizes farther and farther around the mountain range, each subset is undergoing natural and sexual selection pressures.  Of course, these pressures are not the same on both sides of the mountain, you have different light, weather, environment, predators, nesting sites, etc. When the two subsets reach the other end of the mountain range and re-converge they no longer recognize each other as of the same species.  They choose different nest sites and even sing slightly different songs.  They are both different from each other and from the original source population.  This particular mechanism is referred to as "ring species."  The image below shows why.

As a side, when looking for an image to help show this I found a lot of creationism websites that use ring species and speciation as reason to show evolution does not exist.  They cite that such species are not stead fast and singular and thereby are not showing evolutionary process.  To this I say, by being fluctuating and changing they certainly aren't showing that they were put on this Earth in their perfect form then are they?  Ecology and evolution are messy, that's why they're so interesting.  If anyone actually knew the straight answer to everything, they'd get paid a lot more.

Now that aside, that issue of fluctuating species is the major point I actually want to talk about.  Apparently unbeknownst to our extreme creationist friends, it is not necessarily speciation that does the fluctuating, it is the way in which we define it.  Our example above shows speciation, up to three species total in the end.  The problem arises when we try to draw lines.  What about all of the colonies in the middle?  They're a little bit of everybody and would probably breed with more than one group.  What are they?  Hybrids may be the answer.  Mixes between two populations.  But that leads to all sorts of problems.  Let's take a step back first and look at why defining species is so hard in the first place.  Don't worry, we'll get back to this later.

Two guys named Coyne and Orr took time in their 2004 book on Speciation to figure out just how many different ways we had to identify species. Nine. Nine MAJOR ways with sub groups among them.  These range from change of habitat, to reproductive isolation, to genetic change, to biochemical effects and so on.  Now firstly I'd like to dispel the "genetics is the answer to all" idea.  I more than understand and respect using genetic code changes, especially since genetics of course is one of the necessary basic constructs for evolution to occur.  But bear with me and follow me through an example.

When I took my Phycology course (study of algae) I was confronted with a interesting and (at the time) frustrating situation.  We were in lab learning to identify different species of algae.  I was identifying one using the standard dichotomous key.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, a dichotomous key takes characteristics for a given specimen and splits them into 2 groups-Spines are present or absent.  You follow the pathway for your given sample and if you play your cards right you use these split characteristics to arrive at the proper identification.  See below for a very general example.


Now, when I had reached the end of the road I had two choices that led to two related but separate species.  The way to tell the difference was by color.  More specifically, I had to decide whether my specimen was "dark lime green" or "apple green".  Ooookay, so I was stumped, thinking what is the actual difference between these colors (since my 64 crayons box was at home) and was it distinct enough for the average person to get right, even with the correct illumination.  So I brought my professor, here on the Triggerfish, over and explained.  Hand on my heart, the conversation went thusly.  Triggerfish quickly told me the answer.  I was surprised and asked how it could tell.  Triggerfish responded that it just knew.  I asked if the coloration was useful, it replied no, there was almost no way to make a correct assessment based on that.  (Okay, so for you following along by in large these two species look the same).  When I asked how it knew, Triggerfish replied that it knew the genetic coding for the species in the area (Okay so the genes were different).  I then asked in the two species had any ecological differences, looking for habitat choice, temperature tolerance, nutrient requirements.  The answer? No. Bluntly.  (So functionally these species were identical).  Then angry Triggerfish walked away.  I promise you will hear about Triggerfish again, it was a particular thorn in my side and the side of my other grad student counterparts.  Facebook page dedication and all (of course not under Triggerfish, combined with a terminator spoof if I recall).  I'll discuss this in my teaching posts as well, "I just know" and "try harder" are things you never tell a student.



Anyway, I digress, my point is these two algae were separated into different species groups because they were genetically distinct somewhere in their lines of code.  This to this day seems completely pointless to me, different shades of green and a little obscene if you will.  Moreover it shows that what seems to be the most straightforward way of assigning species isn't any more irrefutable than some of the others.  There's always a dance of where to draw the line, and people will argue violently on where to draw the line.

Next time we'll hit on other popular ways to define species and where those have pitfalls as well.

Don't forget, questions or comments are welcome!


"In science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world, not the man to whom the idea first occurs."
Sir Francis Darwin

Paleoecology: A long-term complicated relationship. I can't break-up, my CD's are in his truck

Sorry about the delay, I was on a bit of vacation. Not thinking about school or work in real life and the internet universe as well. I'll make it up to you though!

Now, continuing on my previous train of though.  There are many ways in which ecology gets complicated and tends not to look as pretty as the previous post shows.

Let's look at some of my MS (Master's of Science) work as a starting point.

I worked in a field called paleoecology in order to tie in aquatic species with water quality to look at pollution affects on a lake over time.  Diatoms (see Fig. 1) are a form of algae that is made up primarily of silica, and therefore fossilizes in the sediment of the lake they live in when they die. What we can do then is take a core of the lake bed. Each year a new layer of sediment is added to the bottom of a lake. We can take a core of a lake, date it using chemistry (such as Lead 210 dating) and compare what things are in each layer of the core with the associated date.  This allows us to track ecological community changes (the relative number of each species or population of diatoms in a year) through time.  NOW in addition to all that knowledge you can also run chemistry on the surface of the lake bottom (before the chemicals mix or breakdown).  You can compare the water chemistry (things like nitrogen, phosphorus, oxygen, pH, or temperature) with the species found and their relative numbers. This can tell you the preference and tolerance of these species to a given water chemistry factor. So species that have a lot of individuals fossilized at the same level as the water chemistry you tested do very well in those conditions (say high nitrogen, which remember is basically a fertilizer).  Species that are low in numbers (or not in the sample) do poorly under those conditions.  With me so far?
Fig. 1: Diatoms
Fig. 2: A core from the bottom of a lake (depth of mud at bottom)

Okay then so here's the kicker, with the relationship of species to water chemistry, you can look back at older layers of the lake sediment and count the number of species and individuals that are fossilized.  Once you know the community structure, you can use that information to estimate what the water chemistry was likely like!  You can start to understand how a lake has change over hundreds or even thousands of years!!

Now of course, is where is starts to get dirty.  Remember this is still ecology.  So what happened with me is, after 2 years (normal length of a MS program), it didn't work.  But in a way that's what made the project really interesting (and of course at the time very frustrating).  When I ran my estimates and compared them to known emission rates of nitrogen from the area they were exactly inverted! My model checked out well against expected ecological relationships (we call it r squared, or how tightly the relationship of your data is). For something more linear like chemistry or physics you would never accept and r squared value below 0.8 or so (on a scale of 0-1).  In ecology? Remember 0.4 is fantastic and numbers like 0.1 are not even unusual.  The reason is that there are many factors that effect an organism and its habitat and the variable you are testing is likely only one piece of a much larger puzzle.  That doesn't mean it's not important, it just means it's complicated and intertwined.

In my case what we think may be happening is one particular species tends to completely dominate the older sediments, and the problem it this species is a known generalist (often can do well in many different conditions and it quite good at competing with other species for a limited resource).  I proposed that the model needed to be able to ignore such species.  More in depth later.  As a result I have a very controversial paper in lieu since the model has been used for 30 years.  So it's been hard to publish.  See previous Science post for likely reasons why...



"Science is facts; just as houses are made of stones, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house and a collection of facts is not necessarily science."  Henri Poincare