Experience being a teacher assistant

As we come to high school and we start thinking about preparing for college, a very important thing to consider is the idea of exposing yourself to other people - this doesn’t only build your college application, but also helps you create new relationships with people and build more skills, such as having more responsibility. Today, I am going to tell you all my story of being a teacher assistant, and how it has helped me grow as a person!

Initially, there isn’t really a position of a teacher assistant at my school, but my school, in wanting to help high schoolers with the extracurricular activities aspect (I think), has created something sort of like “job opportunities” for high schoolers (apparently the 9th graders since we are the oldest age group in the school: our school is new) where during a free period every Friday, we can help different teachers out - this free period only applies to 9th grader - with different roles available. And I, as a person who was very interested in the idea, decided to apply for a position, which was to be the Math Teacher Assistant for a 6th-grade class. The application form was pretty simple, where it asked me to provide a CV - this was actually a benefit to me, since I have had experience tutoring kids before. And just like that, my application was accepted, and then it came to the interview round. It wasn’t really a very serious one, though - me and that teacher, Ms. Ashley (who was my math teacher in 6th grade and 7th grade) would set down a time, and then I would come to the room and we would talk. So the interview went pretty well, and in the end I was accepted as the teacher assistant for her class.

I actually could really recall the first day of me getting this position - it was a friday (well, isn’t it obvious lol), and when I came to the class, the students there were definitely very curious to see my presence. Later on, Ms. Ashley introduced me to the whole class, and when I came to my seat, several kids told me about the fact that before I was here, there had been a teacher assistant, who was also another 9th grader. I personally knew that person, so we kind of talked about that person a bit, and then we talked about other things as well, so honestly, I got along with the kids there pretty well.

The weekly meetings went on like that, where every Friday I would come there and help around the classroom. The majority of the time, it was about walking around and helping students out, but I would help Ms. Ashley with things like hanging posters on the wall and distributing quiz papers. I actually developed very good friendships with some of the kids there, and honestly, they were all very friendly and nice (a bit noisy though!)

But that was long ago, and now, my schedule doesn’t have that free time block on friday anymore, so I can’t be Ms Ashley’s teacher assistant anymore (the AP curriculum was very rigorous, and also Ms. Ashley wasn’t teaching at my school anymore so … yea), but I still remain friends with some kids in the room, and by having the opportunity to become the teacher assistant, I have learned so many things! First, and definitely the most important, is responsibility - by holding that position for around half a year, I learned to have the responsibility of helping others, since whereas some people are able to grasp the content quickly, others don’t really have that ability. The second thing is about the importance of reaching out to other people - opportunities can’t just come to you, right? Because of this, if you want to have your customers, don’t wait for them to come to you: come and reach out to them. If I hadn’t done that application, I certainly wouldn’t have had the opportunity to hold this position. And last but not least is the importance of, basically, exposing yourself. When you are exposing yourself to new people and with things you haven’t done before, there are a lot of things that you can learn from, and I am very certain that these things can be applied later on, even when you are not in the school environment anymore. Additionally, to make acquaintances with new people is honestly something that I will encourage you to do if you are in high school - it is not just about fitting in the school environment, but it’s more about creating relationships that can benefit you later on in the future. Certainly, there are schools (like mine some time ago) that will offer this particular opportunity, but the moral of the story here isn’t just that you should become a teacher assistant - the thing that I hope you gain from from reading this is that you will start to expose yourself more to other people, because believe it or not, it will bring to you a lot of benefits, both in the short and long terms.