Is it inappropriate to request certain teaching times?

[microscopic]

Background: I'm a new TA for this semester, and the prof in charge just asked us to send her our schedules so she could assign us sections to teach. I looked at the available sections, I saw that there were 3 sections that are held from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. With our TA duties (answering questions and cleanup), I would probably be done at 10 pm.

Dilemma: So...I really, really don't want to teach these sections. I have classes of my own at 8:30 am every day, and it just seems ridiculous to have to be on campus from 8 am until 10 pm. I drive ~15 minutes to school, unlike most of my cohort who live within walking distance, so it's a waste of time and money to go home in the middle of the day. I know grad school has its late nights in the lab, but I want the reason that I'm exhausted and out late to be my own research and degree, not my TA assignment. Though I wouldn't bring this up to my prof, I also have a cat. He'd be okay, but I think it's rather unkind to leave him alone 14 hours a day and sleep the rest of the time I'm home.

Is this one of those "suck it up, you're in grad school now" moments? Would it seem disrespectful or annoying to request that I don't teach those sections (there are 12 other sections that are at more reasonable times for me)? Or is it reasonable to ask that someone who lives closer to campus be considered for the night sections first?

 

Thanks!

Edited August 23, 2016 by microscopic

[fuzzylogician]

It's reasonable to respectfully ask the professor to take this request into consideration, understanding that other constraints might make it impossible to accommodate your request. So, I wouldn't write anything that sounds like a demand or doesn't understand your position with respect to the system. But yes, I don't think there is any harm in saying that although you are technically available, it would make for very long and difficult day(s) for you; since you live far from the school it won't be easy for you to go home to take breaks, so if you could be assigned one of the earlier sections, you would be very thankful. You understand that other considerations might make this impossible, but you wanted to bring this to your professor's attention in case that they can help. 

[TakeruK]

I have two opinions. One is an idealistic one, where I would say to just send your availability from 8am to 5pm. I don't think TAs should be assigned to sections past 5pm or on weekends unless we are being paid overtime or we agree to be assigned to those times. However, this is coming from an approach where TAs are unionized employees and we have contracts that protect us. It is very difficult to make a similar request without this protection or without contracts that stipulate what times are appropriate TA assignment hours. (My TA position prior to this one had a contract that said regular TA hours are 8am to 5pm and anything outside of this requires special permission and/or extra pay).

The more realistic one is what fuzzy said. We are limited by the actual viable options at hand. Some other ways to approach this would be:

- You can indicate your preference without making it a "demand" is to send schedules with times that say "available", "not available" and "could be available if necessary"

- You can just say you are "not available" for those times. Like you said, maybe some other students will prefer those times and if there are 15 sections and 15 TAs, then you just need 3 other TAs to prefer those times. If it turns out that no one else wants to do those times, then I am sure the prof has a system in place for filling those spots. (e.g. they might ask again, indicating their need for these spots, and then you can volunteer yourself if you so choose)

- If it's really just once per week (I'm not sure if you have to do 1 section per week or more than 1 section per week), then maybe a 15 minute drive home isn't that bad? I live about 15 minutes by car from school (in traffic, 10 mins without) and I feel like this is a very short distance. But I know everyone is different---my undergrad commute was 60-90 minutes each way! If I forget something at home during my workday, I just drive home and grab it, probably only lose around 25-30 minutes, which I can stay a little bit later for etc. So, if I was in your position, I would probably leave campus at 2pm and return at 6pm. A 30 minute roundtrip is annoying for something like just an hour off, but when it's several hours like this, I'd say it's worth it. You can interact with your cat, make dinner, take a break etc. (i.e. I'd just do whatever I normally do from 6pm to 10pm but since I have to TA in that time, I'd do it from 2pm to 6pm instead!)

- You can also consider moving your class to a later time, if you're in a program where this is possible. (Many grad classes I've taken either don't pick a class time until the first day of class or the first day of class is used to choose a better class time for everyone, but my classes are generally smaller, only 5-7 people). 

- You can consider switching sections with another TA, especially if you are assigned more than 1 evening section. Or, depending on the section format/structure, maybe you can alternate with another TA so that everyone only spends a couple of weeks with the evening section instead of all semester. (But this only works for some types of classes, not going to work if it's like lab classes that everyone must attend etc.)

[fuzzylogician]

This just in: 

https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-student-assistants-covered-nlra-0

Not that it's directly relevant to the OP's concern right now (probably). 

[TakeruK]

2 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

This just in: 

https://www.nlrb.gov/news-outreach/news-story/board-student-assistants-covered-nlra-0

Not that it's directly relevant to the OP's concern right now (probably). 

I saw that news story pretty much right after I wrote the above! 

[fuzzylogician]

It probably deserves its own thread. I've already received an email to the entire community from our university President and a second email from the Dean and the Vice president to the faculty on how to talk to students about unionization (mostly, what not to say/do). It's a big deal. 

[rising_star]

11 hours ago, microscopic said:

Background: I'm a new TA for this semester, and the prof in charge just asked us to send her our schedules so she could assign us sections to teach. I looked at the available sections, I saw that there were 3 sections that are held from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm. With our TA duties (answering questions and cleanup), I would probably be done at 10 pm.

Is this one of those "suck it up, you're in grad school now" moments? Would it seem disrespectful or annoying to request that I don't teach those sections (there are 12 other sections that are at more reasonable times for me)? Or is it reasonable to ask that someone who lives closer to campus be considered for the night sections first?

I deleted your entire dilemma because it's not actually a dilemma (or at least I'm not treating it as such for the purposes of replying). Some additional information would be helpful. How many sections is each TA responsible for? Is it common for TAs to be scheduled to teach multiple sections back to back? 

Now, for a more realistic answer. If I were the Prof in charge, this is what I would be considering:

1) How to minimize the number of back to back sessions people teach because it necessarily means that students have less time to ask questions before or after class than they might have otherwise. (If you haven't taught back to back [I've done it the past four semesters], you may be underestimating the amount of time it takes to get set up, answer questions students have, and have some of that informal conversation with students which helps on end of course evals.

2) Which other TAs have pressing needs/requirements that must be met. Is there someone who can't do certain sections because it conflicts with a required course? Is there someone who has specific needs due to an ailment or childcare needs?

3) Is there a way to meet the above while still covering all of the sections, even if people don't get what they want?

To be quite honest, if a student came to me and said they couldn't do certain TA sections because of their cat or their 15 minute commute, I would chuckle and probably roll my eyes. If you're really that concerned about your cat, hire someone to come over and play with your cat on that day. In my mind, this isn't unreasonable because I have a dog walker come on my two long teaching days for my dog. If money is the issue, then you can probably find a petless grad student who wouldn't mind the chance to hang with a cat. Or, you know, it's 15 minutes each way, so even if you only have an hour, you could spend half an hour with your cat.

4 hours ago, fuzzylogician said:

It probably deserves its own thread. I've already received an email to the entire community from our university President and a second email from the Dean and the Vice president to the faculty on how to talk to students about unionization (mostly, what not to say/do). It's a big deal. 

Great idea! Please do!!

[AKACaz]

Late reply but - depending on circumstances, I would think it is indeed appropriate to ask for particular teaching times. The OP's problem is no doubt solved by now, but if someone else's experience will help: I commute 1.5-2 hours each way to campus, and found that making that trip 4 days a week this past fall, purely to make teaching times (it would have been only 1 day a week if I hadn't been teaching) was exhausting and soul-destroying, not to mention expensive. This semester, I decided to put my foot down and wrote to the professor teaching the class asking - politely but firmly - if I could propose discussion section times that would limit my time on campus to three days a week. She was amenable, and having even that one day back has made a huge difference.

TL;DR - I doubt there could be much harm in asking.

[AP]

In my program, the undergraduate coordinator would ask our preferred time and try to deliver. Yet, we were always warned that we couldn't have similar themes on the same time band (like African history survey and African history of 20th century both at 11am because of majors). Teaching at 6.30pm must have been really hard!