Professionalism: What is it good for?

You’re told it’s important. In our classes, we even get graded on it. And when I got the TA mentor position, I was told professionalism is one of the most important things the journalism faculty wants me to help TAs work on.

But what is professionalism, anyway?

I’ve never liked the term for a few reasons. It’s one of those concepts like “networking” and “personal branding” that gets thrown around a lot but isn’t very well defined. “She’s unprofessional” seems too much like a way to say “I don’t like her” without being, well, unprofessional.

Also, I can’t ignore the class bias alarm bell implanted in my brain during my undergraduate years spent learning Marxist political theory. When people say “be professional," they often really mean “be more like people in the professions” – i.e. doctors, lawyers, accountants, and engineers. The key to getting people to take you seriously, it seems, is to act and dress like someone who would hold one of these jobs – someone in the upper middle class.

But even though there are things about the term that rub me the wrong way, there are other things about it that are important, useful and good.

I came across this question posted on an online forum by a 22-year-old trying to break into freelance writing. Basically, she was confused about how to combine advice about everything from business cards to age to clothing to achieve the elusive goal of “being professional.” And she got some really good advice back. Advice including:

- Meet deadlines religiously
- Don’t pretend you know how to do something if you don’t. Ask for help.
- Take responsibility for your mistakes
- Don’t complain about other people
- Cover your butt. Save emails that you can use to defend your actions if they’re called into question.

What all this really boils down to is empathy. If you can empathize with your boss and coworkers, you’ll do your job in a way that makes their lives easier, not harder. If you’re thinking about people other than yourself, you’ll realize how much it stresses people out to show up late and miss deadlines, and how much it helps when you’re punctual. Obviously, this applies to just about everything in life – from handing back assignments to students on time to that golden, mythical day when you’ll actually be employed full time.

All that stuff about appropriate work wear and firm handshakes is a distraction. Thinking about other people is the most important thing.

Tips for effective grading

Journalism TAs probably have the toughest time grading. Not only are students competitive and prone to grade challenges, we’re also expected to hold them up to higher standards of grammar and writing style than in other disciplines.

Here are a few tips to make your life easier. They should apply to TAs in journalism who are working in other departments, too.

1. Remember that grades are an emotional issue.

Something I’ve heard come up in workshops is that if we could just get students to see grades rationally instead of emotionally, all conflicts could be resolved.

This is impossible. When you assign a student a grade, you’re passing judgment on their work. For dedicated students, work is very closely tied to how you define yourself as a person. So to these students, you’re basically grading them on how they’re doing in life.

There can be a “sink or swim” mentality in journalism – and other departments. There’s a difference between coddling someone and remembering that what you write and the grade you give will probably be taken personally - and taking it personally is totally natural.

It helps me to remember the phrase “constructive criticism.” Is what you’re writing constructive, or just criticism? If it’s just criticism, what’s the point in writing it? Ask yourself, “How can I help the student improve?” instead of “Is there anything wrong with this paper that I forgot to point out?”

2. Back up your grades both digitally and as a hard copy.

Emailing grades to yourself is a good idea, because Google’s entire cloud memory is a lot less likely to crash than your hard drive. But have a hard copy too, just in case.

7. Criticize "this paper," not "you.”

This is tied to remembering grades are an emotional issue. Even though students often see their paper as an extension of themselves, you can help break that association by never using the word “you” in your feedback.

8. Use a question rather than a correction to challenge errors.

“How could this sentence be phrased more clearly?” “What other examples could you use here?” This is another tip for making your criticism constructive, not destructive.

9. Put your papers in piles before grading them.

I found this technique very helpful. As you read each paper, put them in piles based on what you thought of them. I generally had three piles: “Very good,” “met all the basic requirements but didn’t blow me away,” and “has some sort of major problem.” I often found that as I went back over them, I re-thought my original assessment if I couldn’t find a concrete reason to justify it. I might not have changed the grade if I hadn’t used that system.

10. Don’t leave all your grading to the last minute.

I marked 50 exams in 48 hours last spring. I liveblogged it. Hopefully there was no long term psychological damage.

11. Be glad there are no research assistant positions this year.

Whenever you’re tempted to put your head down and weep into your pile of unmarked papers, just be thankful that this is not you.

Liz and I are going to offer the grading workshop again, probably on Thursday Oct. 22. In that workshop, we grade a mock essay in groups. Half the groups get a rubric, the other half doesn’t. It’s really interesting to see how other people’s minds work when they grade, and how much having a rubric changes things. You can find the slides for the workshop here.

Materials from discussion groups workshop

Wondering what you missed at the workshop on leading effective discussion groups? You can find the powerpoint slides here. Also, Liz Martin, my always thoughtful and hard-working partner in TA mentor crime, typed up notes on the best take-away tips that came out of the discussions in both workshops. They're copied and pasted below.

Remember that Monday's workshop on grading will be in St. Pat's room 472 at 11:30. That's conveniently nearby and immediately after J5000, but not right next door so the MJ1s don't have to guiltily avoid looking me in the eye as they shuffle past like last time. I try to be thoughtful.

Facilitating Effective Discussions: Sample Scenarios

For the following situations, how could they be handled effectively? How could you prepare yourself to avoid these situations?

1. Only four or five students show up to your discussion group.
• Make the session as fun and useful as possible. Don’t give up because many students are missing.
• Address specific concerns of these students
• Emphasize that the session is still important.
• Have activities or questions prepared in case attendance is low.
• Emphasize importance of regular attendance to students. Let them know you record attendance.
• Keep in touch with students through WebCT or email to let them know what will be happening in upcoming sessions.
• Find out from students how to make discussion groups more useful to them so they want to attend.
• Relate the discussions back to lecture material and readings.
• Emphasize points that might show up on exams.
• Incorporate different media to make your sessions more interesting.

2. One student keeps monopolizing the discussion and bringing it off track.
• Identify the relevant points to what the student says. Paraphrase what the student said and re-focus the discussion
• Make eye contact with other students.
• Call on other students if they are attempting to contribute but are being cut-off.
• Regain control of the discussion by emphasizing that you are the moderator.
• Emphasize that others should get a turn to speak
• Politely interrupt the student if they are becoming obnoxious
• Use smaller-group activities to allow quieter students to have their ideas heard

3. No one in the class has done the readings.
• Have an alternate activity prepared in case students haven’t done readings.
• Divide the reading into sections. Have students break into pairs or small groups, read the section and summarize
• Come prepared with 5-10 key points from the readings. Go through the text in small groups and have groups discuss these points
• Ask at the beginning who has completed which readings. If lots of people did one reading, you can focus the discussion on that reading. If some did another, you can break into smaller groups to discuss individual readings.
• Give pop quizzes at the beginning of sessions to encourage students to read regularly
• Provide students with focus questions a week in advance as a preview to next week

4. You have to lead a discussion after a paper was just handed back that many students did poorly on.
• Address some of the main issues from the essay
• Provide students with resources to help with their next essay
• Have a fun, light activity prepared to get their mind off the essay

5. A student makes a comment that offends another student.
• Handle the situation immediately. Ask the student to explain their comment
o Ask the student if they can restate their point in a less offensive way
o Ask the student to take a moment to think over their statement and give them a chance to reformulate it
• Point out why the comment was offensive
• Focus on the comment, not on the person
• Allow students to take a break if the situation is emotionally charged. Take the opportunity to talk to the individuals privately.
• Establish ground rules with your students in the first class. Outline what kind of behavior is not appropriate.
• Have students create a contract of respect for the classroom.

Time management

When I met the new MJs last week, managing the insane demands on their time seemed to be their biggest concern. It’s possible that it became their biggest concern because everyone kept telling them about how insanely busy they were going to be until they got freaked out. But nevertheless, I hope this will be a useful topic. Here’s a list of tips.

Break tasks up into small chunks. Concordia’s Centre for Teaching and Learning Services recommends that you take a big goal, like marking a stack of research papers, and break it into smaller tasks, like marking five before dinner. They also recommend that you remind yourself why you’re doing what you’re doing: “I am marking this giant pile of research papers because I need this job to pay rent next month and I’d like to use this professor as a reference,” for example.

Do high priority work before you have a chance to get distracted. I never have enough self discipline to actually do this, but Penelope Trunk recommends working on a high-priority project for an hour before you look at your email or open anything else that might distract you.

Only touch things once. For example, if you get an email suggesting a meeting time, write the time down right away, then file or delete the email. If you have to go searching for the information later, you’ve just taken twice as much time dealing with that email. But Penelope Trunk also reminds you that:

Good time management doesn’t mean dealing with everything right away. The classic example for TAs is the student who emails you in a panic the night before he has to present or hand in a paper asking you for help. That’s his time management problem, not yours.

Schedule when and where you’re going to do things. Peter Bregman has a very good if slightly insane list of time management tips at HarvardBusiness.com. He cites a study that found 100 per cent of women who said when and where they would do a breast exam actually followed through, whereas only 53 per cent of women who had a more vague plan did. Think about when you have gaps of available time in your day, then plan what you’re going to get done during them and where.

Congratulate yourself on your excellent time management skills. Make the first item on every to do list “make list.” When you’ve finished the list, you already have one thing to check off. You are so efficient. Buy yourself a cookie. And while you’re waiting for your cookie:

Read the newspaper while you’re standing in lines. And waiting for the bus, and waiting for class to start, and waiting to meet friends. Also, listen to the radio while you wash dishes and get ready in the morning. Send emails while you watch The National. Keeping up with the news is much less daunting if you multitask.

Remember to schedule your daytime hours. It’s Thursday morning. You have a news story due Tuesday. Think you have plenty of time because you have five days to do it? Wrong – you’ll be in class all day Friday (if you’re an MJ1) and you won’t be able to reach anyone on the weekend. If you don’t start today you’ll be in a mad scramble to get interviews on Monday.

Ban instant messaging. I made this fabulous discovery in fourth year – if I don’t log in to MSN, I finish whatever I’m doing twice as fast. Instant messaging is the biggest time vampire in the universe, because it’s constant random interruptions that people expect you to reply to immediately. I also discovered that I read and write twice as fast if I’m not listening to music with words (music with no lyrics is fine).

Schedule happy time. Everyone deserves an hour with some ice cream, wine and streaming TV on a regular basis.

It’s not a sprint, it’s a marathon. Matt Pearson, who graduated last year, came up with this metaphor for the program. It’s a good one. Don’t burn yourself out early.

Interviews and discussion groups: strangely similar.

As I got ready to run some workshops on effective discussion groups, I realized something. A discussion group is just like an interview.

Usually you don't interview 30 people at once, of course. And in a real interview, you're trying to learn something instead of trying to teach something. But other than that, the basic idea is the same: you're trying to get them to say something interesting and intelligent by asking questions.

Here are the basic concepts that apply to both running a discussion group and conducting an interview:

Ask open-ended questions. Don't ask yes or no questions (ex: Do you think the NDP will continue to prop up the government?). Don't ask leading questions (ex: Do you think the NDP is propping up the government because they struck a deal with the Conservatives?). Don't ask long-winded questions (ex: Given Layton's past strategy of using his party's record of consistently voting against the government to demonstrate the NDP's strength, what kind of strategy change does this signal for the NDP and why are they changing tactics now?). Don't ask double-barreled questions (see previous: the person answering will pick whichever part of the question is easier to answer and ignore the other part). Ask simple, direct, open questions that start with words like how and why (ex: Why would the NDP choose to prop up the government?). You'll get the most direct, interesting and honest answers in return, and they'll generate further discussion.

Research your subjects. It drives students crazy when profs and TAs assume they know nothing when they actually know a lot. It's just as bad when they assume students understand difficult foundational theories that are actually going over their heads. And it drives sources crazy when you don't know basic things you could have found out on the internet.

Be focused. I have been in so many classes where I've spent the entire time wondering where the prof or TA is going with this line of questioning or activity and how it's supposed to help me write a better paper or exam. Same thing in an interview. If it's clear what you're trying to find out and why, you'll get better answers.

Think fast. Sometimes you'll have a page full of interesting, open-ended questions prepared, and no one will have done the readings. Likewise, sometimes you'll book an interview and your subject will be a dud. This web resource from Concordia has some good ideas for things to do when you realize your original plan isn't going to work out. Keep a few of them in mind.

Listen. Ask follow up questions based on what's been said instead of sticking to a script. But...

Don't be afraid to cut people off. If you have limited time and it's obvious the discussion is going astray, guide it back to your focus. Because you should always:

Remember that you're in charge. It doesn't matter how important the person you're interviewing is - it's your interview. Don't let them turn it around and start asking you questions, or try to bluster their way through tough questions by making you feel stupid for asking them. In a discussion group, remember that THEY have a stake in impressing YOU - not the other way around.

Also, remember that both of them get a lot easier with practice.

Oops.

I accidentally published a post here that I meant to publish in my personal blog. Coincidentally, it had to do with teaching, but I didn't mean to put it here. I deleted it, but it might still show up in your feed reader, so I thought I'd explain to avoid confusion.

Whoops! You can read it here, if you're interested.

Make J-School TA come to you.

Hello and welcome!

This blog is designed to help you. Hopefully after today's training sessions you'll feel more confident about your new job. But in case there are specific areas you'd like to learn more about before marking your first paper or leading your first tutorial, I've curated a ton of links for you with some more in depth information. They're on the right hand side of the page if you scroll down a bit.

Nervous about speaking in front of a group? Have a look at the tips from Toastmasters International. Never marked a paper? Learn how to make a grading rubric that will save you time and help you be consistent. Not sure how you're going to balance your school work with your TA duties? Peter Bregman of HarvardBusiness.com has some tips for the extremely busy. I even found an application that will block you from sites like Facebook while you're trying to write news stories on deadline.

I'm also planning to write about a post a week on relevant topics, and give you a little more information on what I think are the most useful parts of the resources I've linked to.

But none of my hard work will be of any use to anyone if no one reads it. It's hard to remember to read blogs, and it's annoying to check them only to find that there haven't been any updates since the last time you checked. So I'm going to give you a quick tutorial on how to use iGoogle and Google Reader so that you're notified every time there's a new post. If you don't already use iGoogle, it will change your life. I swear.

1) Go to google.ca/ig
2) Click on "Don't have an iGoogle page?" Or try signing in with your Gmail address. There might be a page set up already with some Google stuff you use. Google is creepy that way.
3) Click "Add stuff"
4) Search for "google reader" in the search box and add it
5) Click on your new Google Reader gadget
5) Sign in with your Gmail address. At this point I think you need to have a Gmail account for it to work. If you don't have one, you can click on "Create an account" and make one. You don't have to actually use it for email.
6) Click "Add a subscription"
7) Type in "jschoolta.blogspot.com"
8) Make iGoogle your homepage

After you've done that, you'll probably want to add a whole bunch of other stuff to iGoogle. I have my Gmail, Facebook, Google Reader, the weather, and headlines from The Globe and Mail, CBC, and the BBC. That means as soon as I go online, I know if I have any email, whether I should bring an umbrella with me to school, if there's a new post in any of the blogs I follow, and what the major news of the day is. I recommend adding some of the blogs I have listed under "journalism blogs" as well - not just because they're interesting, but because I've been asked in internship interviews if I read any journalism blogs and if so, which ones.

You're welcome.