GTA finds calling in the classroom
Melissa Lacey / KANSAN
Catherine Good is a graduate teaching assistant in mathematics. Her specialty is mathematics education.
By Angela Cunningham Special to the Kansan
It is 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon time for calculus. As the students sit, talking quietly, a young woman strides into the classroom.
At about 5 feet 6 inches tall, she is not tiny, but she seems small, delicate. She looks younger than most of the other students. But as soon as she enters, she commands their attention.
She neatly places her materials on her desk. Then, with a smile, she grabs a piece of chalk and says, "Does anybody have any questions about the homework? Or haven't you started your homework yet?" The students laugh.
For Catherine Good, graduate teaching assistant in math, it is time to go to work.
Work is something Good is doing quite a bit of these days. She takes nine hours of graduate classes, teaches nine hours of undergraduate classes and tutors two students for five to six hours a week. Good also tries to leave time for leisure activities with her friends.
Students who are having difficulty just keeping up with classes, much less teaching them, may wonder where Good finds the time.
"It all boils down to time management," she said. "I treat being a TA just like a regular nine-to-five job. I get all my work done during the day, then I do my homework in the evenings."
Although she is busy, Good said she does not mind the long hours because she enjoys teaching and tutoring. Perhaps teaching was a natural progression for Good. Her
grandmother was a teacher, and her mother is an elementary school principal.
When she finishes her master's research in June or July, Good said she hoped to teach math at the junior college level.
But she did not always dream of being a math teacher.
When she graduated in 1991, Good encountered the recession and depressed job market. Like many of her fellow graduates, she settled for a job that was not appealing to her.
"I was a cost accountant for the box manufacturing division of Russell Stover," she said. "A customer would give me an order, and I would figure out the dimensions for the boxes he needed. I did not feel challenged or see a future there."
Good said that when she realized she would never be happy at her job, she began to consider her options. She said that when she thought about what she had enjoyed during college, she kept coming back to one thing — teaching.
“As an undergraduate I was a student assistant in a math class,” she said. “I did some grading and answered students' questions. When I was trying to decide what to do, I just kept thinking about that. I thought, 'Maybe I would enjoy teaching.'”
Good said that teaching gives her a sense of fulfillment that was missing in her job as a cost accountant.
"Ienjoy being able to explain something to students and have them understand," she said. "I feel like I'm giving something back."
"When I worked at Stover's, everything I did made money for an individual. I didn't feel like I was doing anything good for society. I mean, there's not any redeeming value in boxes or chocolate."
When she teaches, Good said she tries to make herself available to her students both in and out of class, so they feel comfortable asking questions. She said she liked her classes to have a "personal feeling" to them.
Sean Larsen, a math GTA who has worked with Good for three semesters, said Good is very attentive to her students.
"She tries to lead them through the problems by asking them probing questions," he said. "She is very good at giving encouragement to her students."
During class, the students listen attentively. A few look as if they would rather be somewhere else but most participate. When one student answers a question incorrectly, Good explains the method for finding the correct solution. Then she adds, "But that was a good guess."
During the course of one class, Good
See GTA. Page7.
October 11, 1993 *K.you* • LIFESTYLE