New TAs often have a good idea of what they want to get out of the course. Maybe they observed TAs during their first year, or they just know that the job is not going to be a piece of cake and they'd appreciate all the help they can get. It's a good idea to wait until meeting with the new TAs before deciding the schedule for the TA Training Workshop. Fill out the syllabus with the students in your course after the Stanford-wide CTL TA Orientation.

Every fall, CTL offers a half-day orientation to being a TA at Stanford. They explain basic policies at Stanford like the Honor Code and about sexual harassment ( pdf file ); experienced TAs give advice about what to do and what not to do; and best of all, they show videotapes of good TAs actually teaching. (There might even be play-acted videos of bad TAs actually teaching - these are hilarious.) The orientation is always informative, and you should require all of the new TAs to attend. It's usually in the morning on the day before classes start. If students are unable to attend the fall CTL orientation, be sure to tell them to attend one of the shorter orientations they offer at the beginning of Winter and Spring Quarters.

Schedule a lunch date immediately following the Orientation, and you can introduce them to lunches on the Department's tab, while you all come up with a schedule of topics to cover during the quarter. It's a good idea to come prepared with some useful ones that you've thought about or that come from other sources. Here are lists of former Mentor TAs' topics. Remember that CTL staff can create a workshop for you on any topic you or your students want to hear about. Of course they also give their own workshops; one option for the course is to attend one or two of these workshops as a group. Here's a list of CTL workshops and events that are coming up soon.

In addition to workshops, CTL has a series of lectures every year called "Award-Winning Teachers on Teaching". This series features Stanford professors who are recognized as being great teachers. They choose their own topic, and give an hour-long presentation on it at a lunch-time series. CTL videotapes many of these lectures (if not all), and they have a library of those videotapes.

Another source of ideas for the syllabus, of course, is your own experience as a TA. Here are some questions to help you dredge up highlights or lowlights of your own famed teaching career, that you wish someone had warned you about before you got up on stage.

1. How did you introduce yourself on the first day?
   
   
2. What did you do, or would you do in the future, if a student is not coming to class or is not turning in homework?
   
   
3. Before you grade a bunch of papers - problem sets or essays - how do you prepare? Do you read over many of them? Speak with the professor about what they expect from the papers? Grade a few papers jointly with the professor?
   
   
4. How do you prepare for sections?
   
   
5. Have you ever had students complain about grades? How did you handle that?
   
   
6. How did you prepare for TAing the class in the first place? Did you meet with the professor ahead of time? Did you help to prepare the syllabus? To prepare the reading packet?
   
   
7. How would you describe your working relationships with professors you have TAed for?
   
   A final resource for stimulating ideas for the TA Training Syllabus is a handout from CTL, about "Planning a Pedagogy Course". Though quite bare, it is a helpful list of topics to think about. If you bring this list to the lunch following the CTL orientation, it will help the new TAs imagine topics that could be discussed in the course.