Gilda

My TA was in class today, but it wouldn't quite be accurate to say things went smoothly.


I found out yesterday from the education department that one of the professors there had had an emergency and wasn't going to be able to do a scheduled observation, and asked if I could cover. It was high school social studies, so I said sure. I had to leave about halfway through to make it to a school to observe a student teacher, and told my TA that she'd have to take the class the second half, but all she'd have to do was discuss "Twenty Six Men and a Girl" for about 25 minutes, which should be a walk in the park for a graduate lit student. Hell, just asking, "What happened between the Tanya and the soldier in the cellar?" should be 20 minutes by itself, or the quote about boredom being she source of evil.

Damn, I should have used a whole class period on this story. [sigh] There is so much really good stuff to cover and I can't get to a fraction of it.

Back to class.

I find out when I'm talking to her just before class that she hadn't done the reading. She's supposed to be reading everything the class does in preparation for covering for me, and has the same syllabus with the entire semester's reading listed by class period. She didn't even have to prepare notes in preparation, as I'd already done that, "Twenty Six Men and a Girl" is, I think, eight pages in our anthology. Maybe six. You can read it in 20 minutes. I told her to park herself in my office, pull out her anthology, and read it now, and she should be able to get it done by the time I left at 9:20.

She didn't have her book with her.

I pull an extra out of the bookshelf, give it to her, and tell her to be ready to take the class by 8:20. Put the transparencies on the overhead in the order you find them in the notebook, discuss what you find on them, and generally lead a discussion of the main themes of the story.

Any of the people reading this could have stepped into that classroom and finished out the class following those instructions. I'd already done all the prep work.

She got there at 9:30, I said, "TA has the class, you're responsible for everything that's discussed, have a good day," and left.

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I talked to Dr. KGB today about my TA. As usual, she was parked in my big leather armchair reading when I came back from my Children's lit class, and Sissy was doing something at my computer over in the corner. The Olympics were on on the TV, with the sound down low but not quite off, and Sissy seemed to know everything that was going on without ever actually looking directly at the screen. She's freaky that way.

I'm always in a good mood after children's lit, because it's by far my favorite class, and coming back to these two is always a little comforting, they being my second and third favorite people at the school.

I asked her what I needed to do officially if my TA wasn't doing her job, and Sissy, having heard this before, called out from the corner, "Either fire her ass or get a room!" Sissy's theory is that the only reason I haven't canned her already is that I'm attracted to her and the pent up sexual tension is making me too flustered to be an effective supervisor.

She went off on a tangent about maybe I wasn't giving her enough responsibility, using my taking half the class today as an example. Every other professor who has student teacher observations, including Dr. KGB, would have had the TA take the whole class instead of splitting it like that, given them time to better prepare for the observation. It sends a message that I don't think she's competent.

After that, though, she said at this point it's probably too far gone to make much of a difference. She said I have two choices. Go to the assitant to the department head who handles TA related business and tell him I'd like to have a new TA assigned because my current TA and I have a personality conflict that prevents us from working well together.
Everyone knows that when a professor says, "personality conflict", that's code for "lazy ass bitch who won't do anything." Everyone would know what was going on and why I got rid of her, but this gives the TA a way to save face and me a way to get rid of her without supporting documentation and without her losing her assistantship.

Failing that, she said to do what the rest of the people here have said: Start documenting every failure to come to class, every missed meeting, every time she's late to class, every time she doesn't get the grading done, even to the point of recording the date of every assignment I give her and the date it's completeted or failure to do so. When I have enough of a paper trail, take it to the assistant to the department head who handles TA's and request a replacement. (but not to Dr. Deparmenthead himself, who would only get pissed off at being bothered by something this small, which isn't an unusual problem. If I do it this way, which would get her fired, I'd get a reputation among the grad students for being a hard-ass. It took me a bit to realize tha she saw this as a benefit, not a drawback.

I asked what she would do, and Sissy called out, "She'd 've canned her lazy ass weeks ago!" Dr. KGB said that's true, but it wouldn't be necessary because she has a reputation.

Turning to Sissy she asked, "Y'all are Gilda's spy, right?" Sissy affirmed this. She's been funneling me reports of what my students say about me away from class. "What do they say about me?"

Sissy said, "Don't fuck with Dr. KGB. She's the meanest bitch in the English department."

"A reputation I have carefully cultivated. Who's more fuckable, me or Gilda?"

"Gilda, but that's cuz she's a lesbian. Guys think lesbian really means 'bisexual' which means 'threesome'. Dr. Hand [a math professor] has you both beat, though."

She also said I'd made two critical mistakes:

1. Don't let the TA's call me anything but Dr. Nakamura or Professor Nakamura. Letting her call me Gilda sent the message that she was my equal, not my subordinate, and more importantly, it sends the same message to the other professors.

2. Don't ask my TA to do things, tell her what she is going to do. The softer approach I prefer might work with many, but there are too many at this level who will interpret it as a sign of weakness and try to take advantage.

I'm going to let things percolate over the weekend, decide what to do, and start fresh Monday.

Gilda

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