Making the transition to being a TA is an interesting thing. When I am leading class discussion, I find myself reflecting on whether or not I am being 'objective' while teaching a particular subject or idea. (Although, why I would presume to be able to reach objectivity, or even think that it is a good thing, is troubling at the same time. I digress...)


In my last class, a woman who has increasingly become a bit distracting, kept interrupting class discussion with quips such as 'I hate unions," "poor people are lazy" or my personal favorite, "I hate feminists." I suggested to her that while it is important to express how one feels about a particular perspective or event, it is more useful when the arguments go a bit deeper that one-liners with no evidence to back up the statement.

After that class I started thinking about the classroom environment, and methods for dealing with students who have views in direct conflict with my own. I have a pretty strong perspective that informs how I understand history, or events in the past, (sometimes referred to as a bit radical) and I guess I want to balance how I teach things with open-ended discussion for the students- I want them to 'discover' and 'unpack' their own understanding of the past, not be forced to view it from my perspective...at the same time, I think it is important to challenge some of the statements made by students (like the one above), and so I am struggling with where the line is between correcting wrong assumptions (?!) and teaching what I believe to be the best approach(s) for understanding history. How do I determine that, interpretation wise? Should I leave my own values behind when teaching, should I temper them, or should I hold them up and encourage students to challenge me, thus provoking conversation?

How do other people deal with this?