In the classroom, a teaching associate assists professors and teachers. The assistance provided by a teaching associate allows the primary teacher to concentrate more of their efforts on developing and implementing lesson plans. A teaching associate is essentially the teacher’s administrative assistant.
Some of a teaching associate’s responsibilities take place in the classroom, while others take place behind the scenes or outside of the classroom. When a teacher is giving a lesson in the classroom, for example, the teaching assistant is also present. The associate may be walking around the classroom during the lesson, answering any questions students may have or assisting students who are having difficulty completing an assignment.
Another important role of a teaching assistant is to assist the teacher by instructing students and teaching the class lesson when the primary teacher is unavailable. In most cases, this is done to aid the teaching associate in gaining experience in the classroom. In other cases, the teaching associate fills in for the primary teacher while they are on vacation or away from the classroom for other reasons.
Administrative or clerical work is one of a teaching assistant’s primary responsibilities. The teaching assistant may be in charge of assisting the teacher in grading papers and tests, or the teaching assistant may be in charge of grading papers and tests on his or her own.
In addition, an associate assists the teacher in keeping track of and recording grades in the grade book or the school’s grading system. A teaching assistant may be the one who collects and sorts all of the teacher’s mail and memos, handling what they can on their own and then passing on what the primary teacher needs to handle or know about.
A teacher assistant can work in a variety of settings. The most common types of teaching assistants are those who work in elementary and secondary schools. Teaching assistants, on the other hand, work in preschools and daycare centers. Regardless of the setting in which the teaching associate works, they provide individual attention to students in the classroom that they may not receive if only a teacher is present. While an associate may be assigned to a general classroom, some associates are assigned to a classroom with special needs students.