Meet the New TATP Staff

The Teaching Assistants’ Training Program welcomes its 2011-12 staff.

The TATP is a peer-training—teaching assistants offering training to other teaching assistants—program that is housed in the Centre for Teaching Support & Innovation.  For more than a decade, the TATP has helped train and offered workshops and consultations for graduate students and teaching assistants at the University of Toronto. The office started out quite small with only 3 staff members but has now grown to 14 (4 coordinators and 10 trainers, including one UTM and one at UTSC). If you are not already familiar with the work of the TATP, please visit their website for more information, including a list of this year’s staff. The TATP Certificate Programs, workshops, departmental training sessions, consultations and resources have made the TATP an indispensible service for UofT graduate students (and undergraduate students working as teaching assistants).

The new staff spent four days in July at the CTSI office preparing. Over the next few months, in particular, they will be experiencing teaching assistant boot camp—working together as teams and preparing for training sessions—before heading in to the trenches for departmental trainings and TA Day.* The staff represent the 4 divisions, as determined by the School of Graduate Studies (Humanities, Social Sciences, Life Sciences and Physical Sciences), which helps when training new TAs but also when reviewing dossiers and leading discipline specific workshops. Now, after their 4 days of training and getting to know each other, they are ready for everything that comes next.

The other advantage to having a large staff that work on the peer-training model means that they are also available for the peer-support model. It is always good to know where you can turn for support, camaraderie or good humour.

* I’m not entirely sure why I’m using military terminology to describe the busy late summer and early fall for the TATP. The first reference worked well but then I need to tie everything together so I stuck with it.