TORI.TIMMONS
Management 200, titled Introduction to Law, is a prerequisite course for students applying to the Foster School of Business. It covers a broad range of topics that are relevant for business students, including areas in which businesses face liability, contracts, and employment law. I have worked as a teaching assistant (TA) for the course for 3 quarters, and plan to work for the final time during spring quarter 2017.
This opportunity sparked my love for teaching. The first quarter I assisted with the course, I developed more relationships with students and received the most positive feedback from students. That quarter, our entire team focused more on the students learning, and not on the graded deliverables. I am ashamed to say that that has not been the case for the two most recent quarters. With each change to the syllabus, and additional teaching assistant to our team, the focus has shifted to the assignments, grades, and avoiding problems.
My personal belief is that this is an ineffective way to teach, and an even more ineffective way to try to foster relationships or build a community. Due to the nature of curved classes and the stiff competition to even apply to the business major, the Foster School of Business has a very cut-throat, competitive culture. While this is helpful for some, in terms of motivation to do well, I think it hurts more than it helps. Classes like this one should be introducing students to others in their cohort and inspire students who want to start their own business, or be in contract-heavy industries, or pursue a legal career. This motivates me to do my best to make the class as enjoyable and relevant to students, so that they are excited about what they are learning and work hard to develop that passion.
It is hard to summarize everything I have learned from this opportunity and from the professor of the course, Tim. To put it simply, I have developed as a professional. I know have more skills in areas that I will encounter in any professional setting. I discovered that I love to teach, but I have also learned that some parts of education do not align with my personal values. I have developed and strengthened my network, and have learned how to act in certain situations, how to manage certain relationships, and how to take ownership of my mistakes without getting (too) emotional. All of this is applicable to my other jobs right now. In fact, in my other job I quickly found the boundaries in terms of how much I could push my own opinion when giving input on a situation and having experienced this with Tim, I knew how to deal with it appropriately. This is an opportunity that I will remember as a huge learning and growth experience, and discovering how strong some of my personal values are will colour my career trajectory.
INTRODUCTION TO LAW
2015 - 2017
MEET THE TA TEAM - JUNE 2016
COMPETENCIES
My experience in this course from start to finish has hinged on my initiative. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I struggled through taking the Introduction to Law (MGMT 200) class, required for all prospective business students. In an effort to improve my grade in the class, and actually understand the material, I sought out academic resources. The professor, Tim McCormack, told me that because it was his first quarter teaching at the UW, he did not have a teaching assistant and did not have any review sessions planned.
In this absence of academic help for myself, I saw an opportunity. When the quarter concluded, I took the initiative to reach out to Tim, asking to be his teaching assistant if he was planning on teaching in the future. He hired me and my boyfriend, Joe, to help him with his 2 sections of MGMT 200.
In my role as Tim’s TA, I have had to take on a great deal of responsibility and initiative. This is primarily because Tim wanted to spend his limited time on making the lectures informative, effective, and entertaining. We had to find the answers to our own questions and had to know when to pursue something without Tim’s approval, and know when to consult him before making a decision. My ability to take initiative was another competency that I developed without realizing it. Going forward, it is a skill that is vital in any role. I hope that it is one that sets me apart from others. This is a competency that I believe others admire, and I hope to use it to earn others’ respect and admiration.
Hand in hand with taking initiative is functioning independently. Tim, who still works as an attorney at his own firm and also runs his entrepreneurial business, hired us so that he could focus all his time on teaching the class. This meant Joe and I dealt with the course website, printing, proctoring, grading, conducting office hours, scheduling, disability accommodations, review sessions, and much more.
In many cases, because Tim had only taught one quarter before we began assisting him, we could not lean on Tim for the answers to all of our questions. We had to find out on our own how to do certain things or to learn what was within our scope and authority. Joe and I are both independent people, and found it easy to go look for the solution to a given problem and present our findings to Tim later on. This only works in our team because we know Tim trusts us to take care of things with the greatest attention to rules and boundaries.
My perception is that millennials are stereotyped as lazy, entitled individuals when they enter the workforce. My ability to function independently on projects with little guidance is a skill that will hopefully dispel that myth. As I enter the workforce, I plan to work hard and use this skill as a way to prove my competency and value to a team and firm.
Through the challenges we faced as a team, I realized the extent to which I believe in my personal values and how I am determined to stick by them. One clear example of this is my core value of fairness. The second quarter I worked as a TA, one of the sections was later in the evening, which conflicted with sorority and fraternity chapter meetings, club meetings, and often students’ work shifts. The early section was full and if the students chose their other commitments over the class, they could be jeopardizing their grade and their learning. To me, the answer seemed simple: the room has capacity for more students than are enrolled in the early section, so let’s get add codes for the course and give them to the students who really need to be in the earlier section. Joe and I went to the registrar’s office and got the add codes that afternoon.
Unfortunately, the Foster School of Business has a policy against add codes. There was not a good reason for this, in my opinion, and I was upset about it. I couldn’t understand why these students were not going to be offered the same opportunity to learn simply because they were involved in other things. For this reason, I worked with students personally to ensure that they were keeping up to date with material and felt they had the same access as everyone else in the class. In this course, not only has my value for fairness been the reason I am so opinionated about how to deal with ethical dilemmas, but it has also been the reason I am so passionate about finding solutions for students.
Tim is a brilliantly intelligent person and a wonderful attorney and professor. That being said, he is not the most organized person I know. Between this and the volume of students we have, I have had to put my organization skills to the test. In the physical sense, we have had to keep the office in order so that we can find a student’s test if they want to review it. I have scheduled the finals for the course and review sessions. And I have been responsible for organizing our team of TAs when we hired two additional people this past fall quarter. Keeping everyone on the same page and everything moving along smoothly has been an important but enjoyable part of my role on the team.
Two important parts of this have been streamlining and centralizing. These go hand in hand but I think there is an important distinction. To streamline things, I used Canvas as our only platform and had students email me to schedule things. I would then send finalized schedules to those that needed them. This avoided unnecessary confusion or time wasted. For example, students may have emailed the TA who was not conducting office hours about looking at their test. Streamlining things made this process easier and faster. Then, as mentioned, I would create a central place for things. Whether it was our master calendar or our online shared folder, it was only one place where Tim and the other TAs had to look to get all the information they needed.
I have improved leaps and bounds in this area, and I have to credit Tim for that. He and I have very different personalities. He is more direct; I avoid confrontation. He has a thick skin; I do not. He doesn’t worry much about miniscule details; I overthink everything. As a result of this, there have been countless situations in which I have completed a task or deliverable, not to his satisfaction and his feedback to me has been upsetting. I have always struggled with receiving feedback. This is not because I don’t like or appreciate feedback; I always want to get better and improve and I know that feedback is necessary for this to happen. However, I am very emotional and sensitive, and take things personally even if they are not an attack on my personal character. Tim has “thrown me under the bus” for my mistakes in front of the class, criticized me for taking things too seriously or taking on too much work, and has used his authority to take me off the management of an assignment if he disagreed with how I was handling students’ disputes. While in each of those moments, I was embarrassed or frustrated or upset, I recognize now that Tim reacted that way so that I could learn from my mistakes and learn a lesson from disagreeing with his method. His technique has made my skin a little thicker, even if it's not by much, and has taught me a lot about working with a boss who is more direct and confrontational. Although I had my meltdowns, I ultimately learned so much from Tim and hope that he continues to be a mentor for me in the future.
In my interactions with students, both in a personal setting and in a review session setting, I have developed my verbal communication skills in a way that I would not have without this experience. While I enjoy working with students, many took small statements I made and used those to try to get a higher grade or dispute the validity of a test question. It became clear to me that I had to be very careful about what I said and how I said it. I see this as a risk management strategy in a way. I often qualify my statements to students with a statement about Tim’s decision or approval. Not only does this discourage students from using my words against me, but it also allows for our team to be communicating in a uniform fashion.
I have also simply become better at speaking publicly and speaking in a welcoming way to strangers. Attendance at review sessions ranged from 100 - 300 students, and I have developed some competence in speaking in a confident and authoritative way. In office hours at the beginning of the quarter, I have found it to be important to try to establish a relationship and some rapport. Despite the number of students we work with each quarter, I try to remember names and faces and try to continuously be meeting students I have not yet previous had an interaction with. These verbal communication skills will be useful in any career I pursue, but particularly in client-focused roles.
This class has presented a challenge in how to act appropriately in a variety of situations and in the contexts of different relationships. My relationship with Tim has evolved a great deal. I am now more comfortable advocating strongly for my opinion. I'm very grateful that Tim is a flexible supervisor and lets me push for my opinion farther than I likely should. But I have learned that there are situations in which I have to be more careful with how hard I advocate for the opposing view.
During Autumn Quarter 2016, Tim and I disagreed on how to deal with grade appeals on one of our assignments. Because it had always been okay in the past, I continued to assert different parts of my perspective. At a certain point, Tim interrupted and "took me off" that assignment. As I tried to protest, he insisted that he wasn't budging and that his say was final. Before this instance, I really spoke freely about my opinions regarding all aspects of the course; how a test had gone, which questions should be thrown out, how to best host a review session, and more. After this instance, I felt more conscious about everything I was saying AND how I was saying it. The dynamic has changed further as we have hired more students to be teaching assistants, and my development has evolved with the dynamic of our team.
Moreover, because I am a student in the business school, I am often teaching fellow classmates or friends of mine. In those situations, it becomes even more crucial that I grade without favoritism and remain completely confidential. I make a conscious effort to get to know the students that I do not already have a relationship with, because I strongly believe that my friendships should not be prioritized in a classroom setting. I want all students to feel like they have equal access to the team of instructors, and I think that this ultimately fosters a friendlier community.
Most business courses are curved, meaning that any student’s grade is dependent on their performance compared to all of their peers. Because of this, I believe our team has a crucial role in upholding the highest standard of ethics in our class.
The dilemmas we have had in the class have ranged from the minor to the serious. Tim, has the ultimate decision in every scenario of how to deal with the student and the situation. The role of the TAs in this is to offer our input and our observations. In examples where students continued to write on their tests after we called time, Tim opted for a point deduction for that student and another minor consequence. On the other hand, we have had a test stolen from our office. Tim, Joe, and I took this much more seriously as some questions were taken from the midterm for use on the final. We spent our weekend rewriting a 150-question test so that no student would have an unfair advantage.
Any cheating, dishonesty, or other misconduct is detrimental to every other student in the course. Thankfully, our team was in agreement that it is paramount that we take these situations seriously and deal with them appropriately.
The competencies I have developed in this experience are well represented in these artifacts. I included a student's rating of our course, a set of slides I created for a review session, and a video of me grading.
