What has 3.5 years of being a student at Berkeley and 2 years of teaching taught me? Let’s find out!

🚫 Disclaimer

This advice and information is somewhat limited due to the fact that I am one undergraduate student studying EECS at UC Berkeley, and have only been a TA for data science courses at Berkeley. However I believe this post is applicable to any EECS/CS/DS course at Berkeley.

How to be a great TA

  • Empathy, patience, and responsibility are the most important traits to have as a TA. Many teachers can deliver course content, but making an effort to connect with your students is where you can go above and beyond.
  • When answering a question, it’s always better to say “I’m not sure, let me get back to you” (and actually get back to the student) rather than trying to make something up or saying something you’re not 100% sure about
  • Classroom environment
    • Positive affirmations mean the world to students and are crucial for creating a safe, inclusive classroom environment. Acknowledge what the student does get right/understand, even if their response is not 100% correct. And if they do get it correct or ask a good question, let them know!
    • Don’t assume prior knowledge, but also don’t be condescending. An easy way to do this is to ask people before diving into a problem how comfortable they feel about a topic using a quick thumbs up/thumbs down poll.
    • Students behave differently when they know people (like the TA or other students) are watching them. Thus, to get students’ true opinions, do polls and surveys as anonymously as possible. What I like to do in my own sections is asking everyone to close their eyes before we do a vote.
    • Fun icebreaker questions, collaborative Spotify playlists, and a positive, approachable vibe go a long way.
    • It’s hard, but learning student names is worth it
  • Office hours
    • Office hours is a lot like being a customer service representative. You need to quickly diagnose the problem the student has or the misunderstanding they have and guide them to the solution, all while making sure you are sensitive to the time, effort, and struggle the student has likely gone through.
    • Come to OH on time, and leave on time. You should finish up any ticket you are in the middle of responding to, but do not overwork.
    • One thing that can be very tempting when faced with a tricky question is to tell a student the step-by-step solution. While this is a fast way to resolve the problem, they might not get as much learning out of it. So what I try to do instead is ask them questions like:
      • What have you tried so far?
      • What do you notice about the problem/output/error message?
      • What do you think caused the error?
      • What do you expect to happen / what do you expect the value of this variable to be at this part of the code? (Drawing out an environment diagram with the student can also be very useful)
      • What if we printed the value of this variable?
      • What if this edge case happened? How does the code currently handle this case?
    • You do not need to get the student from start to finish. Instead, you should give them enough hints and guidance such that they can finish the problem themselves. (This is good from a pedagogical standpoint but also from a practical standpoint, because often for large EECS/CS/DS courses the OH queue can become astronomically long and you need to serve as many students as possible.) A good way to do this is to construct the pseudocode with them, and leave it to them to implement. Reassure the student that they have the information they need and that if they get stuck, they can always re-queue, but that they should now try to do the problem themselves.
    • Giving a similar but simpler/smaller version of the problem can be helpful for students to build intuition. Another important thing to determine when helping a student in OH is what they’re actually trying to do / what question they’re really asking (the XY problem). Sometimes you can go down a rabbit hole only to realize what they asked for is not even needed to solve the problem – so getting to the root of things from the start and asking clarifying questions is great. To do this in practice, I usually start by asking students if they can explain to me in their own words what the problem is asking them to do, what their current approach is, what issue they’re running into is, and how they have tried solving it.
  • Ed
    • (If this is included in your list of responsibilities) Check Ed regularly (ideally every day) and answer questions. Don’t let one or a handful of TAs do everything.
    • Ed supports Markdown and LaTeX formatting, so take advantage of that when answering questions
  • Plan out when you will do TA-related work and don’t let yourself overwork. If you find yourself overwhelmed with work, reach out to the head TAs and/or instructor(s) of record sooner rather than later so it doesn’t become a problem.
  • Be very careful when discussing grades with students. It is an understandably sensitive subject and you should not make any “promises” you can’t keep when it comes to grades. Sometimes it is best to let instructors answer such questions, since they have the final say in grades anyway.
  • When prepping to teach any topic, you should not only know the topics and material you are about to cover, but you should also anticipate what students might ask or get confused about. It may be helpful to also think back to what you struggled with when you took the course. Things to pay attention to are:
    • What concepts do students need understand to complete this problem? What about prerequisites?
    • What are some common approaches to solve this problem?
    • What are some common pitfalls for this problem?
    • What does the staff solution look like?
    • What are some hints I could give without giving away the entire solution?
  • It is normal not to finish the entire discussion worksheet. Prioritize quality over quantity when teaching.

How to be a great student

As a quick aside, you may be thinking, I’m a student paying UC Berkeley to give me a quality education. Why should I care about making my TAs happy? This is their job. While it is true that TAs do this because it is their job, there are many things you can do as a student that make TAs’ jobs easier, which in turn helps them help you without burning out or becoming disillusioned about students/teaching in general. There’s a lot of passion and dedication and hard work that goes into running a course, most of which the average student will not know about unless they become a TA themselves. Doing what you can to help your teachers is not only helpful to you, it is also the right thing to do and shows that you respect TAs’ time.

  • It is normal not to finish the entire discussion worksheet.
  • Instructors and TAs don’t have control over enrollment or waitlists or expansion, so it is not useful to ask in the course Ed. Instead, talk to your department/major advisor or the registrar.
  • Using Ed or any other online Q&A course forum
    • Follow Ed etiquette established by your course and general “formal internet communication in an educational setting” etiquette. This means, for example, you should follow any Ed templates given to you and that asking for dating advice is not appropriate.
    • Search before asking to avoid duplicate threads
    • Ask questions in the appropriate megathreads. This is so that if another student has the same question, they can benefit from the answer too.
    • When asking a question on Ed, make sure to choose the “Question” category, rather than the default “Post” category. This is because TAs will typically sort by Unresolved, and only unanswered Question posts or comments will show up. For the same reason, if you have a follow up question, post it as a reply and make sure to mark the thread or post as unresolved.
    • Avoid screenshots of code or text output. Instead, copy and paste everything into the Ed post, and use the multi-line code block. This is useful for readability, searchability, and in case the TA needs to reproduce your error (for example, by running your code on their machine) or for searching up the error message you are seeing.
    • Provide enough context in your question so that TAs can help you. Avoid the XY problem and don’t be a help vampire – tell us what you did to debug or fix the issue so we know that has been ruled out. This is also a useful skill to learn for your professional life, where there is no answer key.
    • If you have multiple questions, separate them into separate comment threads or posts (whichever is applicable) instead of asking multiple unrelated questions in the same post. This helps with searchability of Ed answering fatigue.
    • While TAs will try to answer Ed posts as soon as they can, remember that they are limited by the fact that they are also students and have to balance their own classes and commitments and that depending on the size of the course staff and how many hours each TA is appointed for, they might not have time to answer your question right away. Depending on how large the course is, staff can also be inundated with questions. For example, as of the end of Fall 2024, I have answered literally thousands of questions on Ed. Thus, refrain from bumping your Ed post / panicking about not getting a response until 1-2 business days have passed.
    • If you have a concern about DSP accommodations or any personally extenuating circumstance, it is generally better to directly email the course email rather than make an Ed post (staff will also usually respond to Ed posts by telling students to email the course email anyway). This is for privacy reasons (only instructors and head/admin TAs have access to the course email) and because it’s logistically easier to keep track of everything via email.
    • Read all weekly/logistical announcements on Ed in their entirety. They contain important information and it is your responsibility to know it!
    • If you agree with a comment/post, you should just like it rather than cluttering up Ed with comments like “+1” or “me too”
    • Don’t use the answer box of a Question post to make a comment. Only use the answer box if you are actually answering someone’s question.
    • If your question requires you to post your code or solution, make sure it is private. If your question is not sensitive, you should make it public so that other students can benefit.
  • Email
    • For anything related to the course, you should email the course email rather than emailing TAs or instructors individually. This is for record-keeping purposes and because the head TAs and instructors have access to the course email anyway and it separates personal and work stuff. The main exception to this is if you need to directly contact the someone for privacy reasons.
    • Like Ed, please allow 1-2 business days before following up. During the first week of classes, midterm season, and finals season, also expect longer response times. If your issue is truly urgent, indicate this in the subject line.
  • If your course accepts extension requests at scale (usually through a Google Form), please do not hesitate to use it if you have an extenuating circumstance. Staff are generally more lenient than you might think and we understand unexpected things happen and/or that students with disabilities require accommodations to learn.
  • Grades
    • While TAs are involved in grading assignments and exams, they do not have control over your final letter grade – that is something only the instructor(s) have control over.
    • If you’re curious about common grade distributions, Berkeleytime is your best bet. But of course, the instructor(s) have the final say and every semester is different. So take everything with a grain of salt. As a Berkeley student myself, I’ve just made peace with the fact that grade calculations are rather opaque and I just have to do my best. Whatever grade will happen will happen. I just try to focus on my own learning and what I can control, rather than what I can’t.
    • Refrain from contacting the instructor(s) or course email to ask for a grade round up, especially if they’ve already stated in the syllabus that they don’t do this. Professors get flooded with grade-related emails especially during finals season, and it would probably not make a difference. If you have a truly extenuating circumstance, you should probably request to take an incomplete rather than a grade boost, because by the time it’s the end of the semester, there’s not much that can be done.
    • Generally, grades in EECS/CS/DS courses at Berkeley are binned rather than curved, which means that as long as you achieve above a certain point threshold, you are assigned a particular letter grade. What this means in practice is that the majority of students get B+/A- grades.
    • The short answer to the question, “How can I improve my grade?” is always “do the work.” The long answer varies by course and by person, and is something you should reach out to your TAs or professor(s) to discuss during office hours.
  • Participate in discussion/lab. Please I promise we don’t bite and it’s just as awkward for us as it is for you when no one speaks :)
  • Office hours
    • If there is an online queue, use it appropriately (e.g. fill out the template and don’t abuse the queue to let everyone ask their questions)
    • Please don’t put TAs in the awkward position of deciding whether to help you or leaving once their OH period is over. It is totally understandable that you are stressed about assignments, but once their shift is over, they are not obligated to help anyone and it would be unfair of them to give anyone special treatment. Moreover, this leads to burn out and overwork.
  • If you find a mistake/typo/wrong solution, please tell course staff so we can fix it
  • This is not really a tip but more of context, but the reason why TAs will ask everyone to stay in the exam room and stay quiet after they finish collecting the exams is because we must count the number of exams we received and ensure that we have everyone’s exam. It would be really bad if we lost track of someone’s exam and wouldn’t be able to give them a grade.

At the end of the day…

… the key to being a good teacher or a good student is to work hard and be kind. Whether it was course staff social bonding, Professors Justin Yokota and Peyrin Kao helping me set up in Dwinelle 155 for my CS 88 guest lecture, a former CS 88 student asking a question for me in busy LING 100 office hours, feedback about my teaching in course surveys and evaluations, a thank you email, or a witty response on Ed making me laugh, small kindnesses mean the world.