I am excited to work as a TA, and love to see the sparkling eyes of students who understand and are excited about learning new things. It is also one of the reasons that I would like to pursue an academic career after my graduation. Since 2018, I have worked as a TA for undergraduate and graduate courses. In the 2020-2021 academic year, I received the "Outstanding Graduate Assistant Award" from the Department of Economics. I hope this award has shown my improvement and performance in teaching.
The courses I have worked on as a TA are “Introduction to Econometrics” and “Intermediate macroeconomics” for undergraduate and graduate, Macroeconomics I and II for graduate students, etc. The majority of the students find these courses hard and highly technical and set their minds that they cannot understand these courses. Therefore, I would like to start by changing their mind. I encourage students to understand the logic and reasoning behind theories first. After that, it would be easy to follow that theory and even programming.
In my opinion, another way to keep students motivated is active learning. For example, there are plenty of real-life examples for every economic evidence on the internet and the TVs. However, I had an opportunity to see a real example that students get interested in subjects through reading effective materials. Specifically, when I was a TA for the “Money and Banking” course, an instructor gave students a case study about the “2007-2008 Financial Crisis”. While grading the assignment, I saw that all students read it well and had strong opinions. It was exciting to see this.
In advanced macroeconomics courses, I hold lab sessions. The way to teach them is different from other courses. Students go to the board to show and explain their answers for homework assignments. While doing this, we discuss and compare them with other students' solutions. During this process, students learn different ways to solve one problem, ways to articulate solutions, and where they made a mistake. Then, they would never have those mistakes again.