BY GABI HUTSON
[email protected]

A new policy for students applying to be a TA will limit all teachers to only having one TA per period per term. This program will go into effect next school year.

Any students wishing to TA for a teacher next year must now complete an application and turn it into their counselors in order to ensure that they can TA. The application is the student’s responsibility to complete and requires a teacher and a parent signature and must be submitted by Apr. 15 to the counselors.

If the student fails to complete the form or misses the deadline, then the spot reserved for a TA period will be filled with one of the alternate selections or the student will be assigned another teacher to assist.

The catalyst of this new policy was a department coordinators meeting, where teachers discussed that the necessary amount of TAs needed is one TA per term per year – a total of two TAs a year. If a teacher feels they need more assistance than this, they will need to contact an administrator and inform them in order to be permitted.

Counselor Robyn Pasco said that it was initiated due to teachers feeling that they had too many TAs and not enough work to occupy them.

“You could say this was driven by the teaching staff, so this was something that – from my understanding – is something the teachers were kinda talking about and said they’d like a different process,” Pasco said. “They felt that they had too many students wanting to TA.”

The form process is designed to keep track of how many students have applied to TA for a teacher and to see if any teacher had exceeded their limited amount. Counselor Jason Bradley believes the sheet was just a way to help teachers and counselors be aware if they were following the new procedure.

“We had to figure out a way to keep track of that, of how many TAs or how many students were signing up to be TA. And which teachers they are signing up for,” Bradley said. “I think the thought behind the forms – its something that has existed for a long time and just hasn’t been used in a long time – the teacher would be made aware they could sign two TA forms for the year, one for each term. Once they’ve signed two TA forms that’s all they get.”

Pasco thinks the TA limitation might be positive as there are plenty of students who TA and find themselves with not enough tasks to keep them occupied

“Not all teachers utilize their TAs and they’ll have three a period and not have enough work for them to do,” Pasco said. “This causes kids to wander around and be bored while we could be getting them in other electives and exposing them to other things.”

According to dance teacher Pilar Steiner, the new policy will not apply to the dance department because the students are seen more as peer teachers than teacher assistants.

Senior Melissa Wade believes that this is fair as the dance department TAs do much more than just assist

“TAs come up with class dances they come up with set dances,” Wade said. “Nothing would get done if we didn’t have this many TAs.”

Another dance TA , and also a senior, Stephen McConnell said that it would be hard to confine the number of dance TAs due to the fact that the circumstances are different for in that department.

“We’re actually teaching while a teacher’s aid is being a teacher’s aid,” McConnell said. “It isn’t an issue for us. As long as its students teaching students I don’t think they can limit it.”