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So I don't remember if I asked you guys, but I'm looking for some helpful tips and suggestions for leading my sections once I take up my TAship next month. I've already got some suggestions and things to avoid from my fiancee and other friends from Facebook, etc. but I'm just wondering if you guys had any additional advice. So far things I'm considering for my section are as follows:

What to do:
Make myself available for my students and stress my accessibility through various channels (chat, email, office hours) to discuss papers or concerns about the class.

When grading papers, make sure that I explain the grade that I give as accurately as possible. Nothing's more annoying than a few underlined lines, a random ? here and there and getting a B.

In leading discussions, besides taking roll I will have a hackey-sack or some sort of "talking stick" that I will use to have a few students reply to questions that I'll have asked the week before to help engage with the reading. I may call on some of the quieter students not necessarily to put them on the spot, because the section should be a place where people can safely talk about their reactions to the reading and assignments and it's really important that Freshmen understand the importance of being memorable for professors when requesting letters of recommendation.

What NOT to do:

Lead a 4th lecture. Section isn't a place for me to ramble on for an hour about what I think about the reading or assignments, etc. It should be a place for students to bounce ideas off of each other and ask me questions about the reading or general history that I will TRY to answer accurately, which leads to my next point...

Don't BS answers. If someone asks me a question that I don't feel like I can answer properly, I will say so. It will be a good opportunity for me to read further into whatever sub-topic they might be asking about and also to connect with the professors and fellow TA's and ask their advice.

There were a few other things but I can't remember at the moment.

Anyways, thoughts? Suggestions? Advice?

Oh yeah, sorry lol...

I'll be TAing for the Survey of Modern East Asia history course. The course covers Chinese, Korean and Japanese history from the 16th century through the modern period. As you could probably tell from the scope of information that's supposed to be covered, it really is a general overview. It helps provide some basic information for students so they can see if East Asian history is the major for them and if so, which focus they'll take (Chinese, Korean, Japanese or another east asian country).

And yeah I can understand what you mean by being put on the spot and totally blanking...it's not my goal to make people feel uncomfortable, but take my fiancee for example.

She's been in school for 3 years, coming on her senior year and she needs to get letters of recommendation for her masters program in Education, but she can't think of any professors that could write her a really good letter. She's always been too scared to talk to professors one on one and so she hasn't made any real significant connections with any of the staff. Part of the reason is because it's how she is, she's just shy around people like that, but another part of it is she wasn't really engaged with courses in a physical sense. She's brilliant, don't get me wrong, and will probably graduate Summa c** Laude, yet she doesn't have the staff connections to help back her up. For students who don't have amazing grades like she does (like me lol) these staff connections are really important. I really think that's a major reason why I got into grad school, I had a very close relationship with 4 out of the 5 members of the Graduate student admissions board because I had classes with them in the past and I regularly visited them during office hours and maintained communications with them.

Anyways, that's the main reason why I'd like students to get comfortable talking in the intimate settings of the section. If they can gain confidence in their abilities while in the section maybe they'll be more willing to talk to the professor and keep steady communications with them and set them up for success in the future.

Anyways, sorry for that little rant, just trying to let you know more of my reasoning behind my developing pedagogy.

@FFG: You don't need to explain yourself xd
I've just always been one of those people who doesn't say anything because they actually don't have anything to say at that moment or are forming it, which is why it's so hard for me. I'd show up at my one lit professor's office after class with brilliant ideas but it took me the entire hour to come up with them, haha. I put a ton of thought in before I say something all fancy and scholarly.

You know what I actually really like in history classes are debates. We did it a lot in highschool, but it very rarely happened in college, and the one teacher who liked to split her class up on different sides always got some interesting things.

I wish I had decent advice for you on this front but it seems like you've got a lot of bases covered so far.

You know it's going to be a bad day when the weatherman says that the humidity level today is going to be as high as it gets for New England. gonk

I'm perfectly comfortable with temperatures in the mid 70s to low 80s. Anything higher and I'm very unhappy. But I'd rather deal with heat than humidity.

Well, hopefully the rain and thunderstorms will help, but the last time I saw a weather report, they said the ungodly humidity would continue through Saturday night. gonk

Ugh.

Well, as of yet, the Shin Megami Tensei series hasn't let me down, so you might want to try giving Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Survivor a shot. As a note, though, I haven't actually played it, so I really can't personally say much about it.

.... stare Notice at all that you have yet to thank me for my gift or sending stuff to you?

Saw this, thought of you