I have been a certified TA for the past two years and currently am employed as a substitute teacher for two local districts. I am very blessed to be asked to work almost five days a week. I graduated from college with a 4.0 in the TA prep program I took,passed the state test for my certification with no issues, yet I feel like maybe I am under prepared. I had all of the confidence in the world pertaining to my abilities as a TA until I recently had a job interview for a TA position that required me to have my own small group (they said anywhere from 5-10) and keep records, prepare all lesson plans and do the report cards for that group. ( I posted about this previously and was very relieved to see that it is a distinct possibility that this particular school was trying to get out of paying a teacher's salary by hiring a TA to do the job, so thank you to all of you who replied to that post .) I am wondering now if I may need to look into gaining more experience as far as the report cards, lesson plans, and record keeping goes if not just simply for my own benefit. My question is where would I begin to look into what I should be doing to gain that experience. If any of you can point me in the right direction where I can brush up on these skills it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks
Depends on what you're teaching. Record keeping and report cards will come naturally - you'll have to get trained on whatever the school uses, and the other teachers can help you. As far as lesson plans go, the Internet is a beautiful, beautiful thing. You can find free lesson templates in a lot of places. Just search for "[topic] [grade level] lesson plan" and it will at least guide you in the right direction.
