Relationship with Faculty and Other TAs

TA:
Resist the urge to voice your disagreement in section because that will be perceived as trying to undermine the professor’s authority in the class. My experience is that most professors are approachable and want to know if their students are having difficulty understanding the material or completing assignments.

Faculty members are aware that as the TA, you are able to interact more closely with the students. The best approach is to convey to the professor the specifics of the problem the students are struggling with so that both of you can be working on finding a solution.

Student:
I’ve been in sections where the TA is bad mouthing the professor and it wasn’t fun being caught in the middle. My classmates and I didn’t know who to give our allegiance to because our grades were on the line. I just wished the TA had taken his issues to the professor so that the problem could have been resolved. We were so upset about the whole thing that we wrote about it in detail on the course evaluations.