Your Rights
as a TA are protected by the Teaching Support Staff Union or TSSU for short. They work to ensure that you are fairly represented and treated as a TA in the university as a whole.
In this section you will find the issues that come up most frequently for TAs at SIAT. This is by no means the only issues you should be aware of though, and it is a great idea to meet with your TSSU rep to find out more about things you should be aware of as a TA.
Your 'Time Use Guideline'
— or TUG for short — is a document that helps establish how your time will be used over the term, and will include breakdowns of items such as your time for lab prep, in-lab or grading. Before or during the first week of classes, you and your instructor should review and sign-off on your TUG ensuring the distribution and the total number of hours looks correct.
This is where the TSSU logbook comes into play, as it lets you track your weekly hours to ensure that you are not working overtime. Keep track of your weekly hour usage as your instructor will need to perform a workload review in which they will check if you are working within the alloted number of hours, or if more time will be needed.
Working within your role
should not be a concern if expectations of what you will be doing were well established with your instructor. You may occassionally be asked to do things that go beyond the scope of your employment, and you are well within your rights to refuse the given task.
Should you find yourself in a situation where you are being asked to complete something beyond the scope of your employment and the instructor does not agree, you should discuss the issue with the department immediately. If the department is unable to help you resolve the issue, then speaking with your TSSU rep should be the next step.
Performance and evaluations
are an item that the instructor will assess as the term goes on. The instructor will likely provide you with feedback as the term progresses, and if there is a formal concern with your performance, they will address it with you in writing.
At the end of the term there is a formal evaluation that will be performed. This evaluation should only address the concerns that came up during the term, and not introduce new ones.
Should you ever have concerns
with your employment, it is a good idea to make those involved aware of it. If there are concerns with your instructor that they have not addressed, it is worthwhile discussing them with the department, and should the department not be able to address them, that is where the TSSU is there to support you. The TSSU is also a good resource for finding out more about your rights as a TA, so should you ever have any questions or concerns, do not hesitate to contact them.