<p>I heard through a current student that Math is oftentimes taught by a "fellow" or TA. Is this common in other boarding schools?</p>
<p><strong>bump</strong></p>
<p>Some boarding schools hire people fresh out of college to teach one or two classes, sit in and observe more experienced teachers, and do other jobs as needed at the school (weekend shuttle driving, chaperoning, dorm duty, etc.) Often these are one year appointments. The quality of these individuals can vary a lot.</p>
<p>You’ll see Teaching Fellows most often at bigger boarding schools. Schools can get away with paying the Fellows low salaries (since most are only there for a year and they are young and still learning how to teach), so it’s a cost saving venture. Personally, I opted to teach full time at a lower-ranked school when I was starting out from college. I made decent money and got to grow into the job a little. The people I know who were teaching fellows were often name brand boarding school grads, or grads of name brand colleges, so the school can boast “Our Fellow is from YALE!” which helps give him/her a little status.</p>
<p>It’s also the reason why some of the bigger schools have slightly lower rankings on the “Percent of Faculty with an Advanced Degree” scale which is the only stat I pay attention to when I’m on the job market. I wanna be on a faculty where the highest number of folks have gone for post-grad! (but that’s just me.)</p>
<p>My kid took two classes taught by teaching fellows. What I will say about these young one-year teachers may be surprising to you, which is that they were actually surprisingly good! I had my doubts and dissatisfaction in the beginning, but I was proved wrong. Yes, they are usually fresh out of college, but since the applicant pool for the teaching fellow positions is big and strong (It IS considered a good “gap year” option for college graduates who intend to move on to graduate school or are figuring out what to do next), the hiring process is quite selective and those who end up getting the positions are very capable individuals. Their lack of teaching experience is made up by their enthusiasm, energetic drive and the fact that they live on campus and don’t have a family to take care of. It turns out that my kid enjoyed the class of one of the teaching fellows’ so much that the teaching fellow became a good friend (he later joined the school as a full time teacher) and a mentor. OTOH, we found some tenured teachers less than impressive. One of them was working toward their PhD at the time who simply didn’t care that much - canceled classes last minute, random in teaching and grading, and delayed/lack of communication etc etc. Of course, the best teachers, in my experience, are still mostly teachers who have taught in the school for years, but most teaching fellows are quite good too. They are definitely not the teachers you want to avoid most if you have the choice.</p>
<p>Even some small schools have these guys. Groton calls it the teacher-intern program. <a href=“Working at Groton | Groton School”>http://www.groton.org/about/working/intern</a></p>
<p>If the presence of frosh teaching fellows is of any concern, Lawrenceville is least affected by it. Lawrenceville leads % faculty with advanced degree among all these widely-discussed prep schools in CC. </p>
<p>Here are some enlightening stats:</p>
<p>School | Self-Reporting | BSR
Lawrenceville | 87% | 98%
Exeter | 80% | 80%
Milton | 80% | 78%
Andover | 77% | 78%
Groton | 73% | 73%
Deerfield | 73% | 73%
St. Paul’s | 72% | 75%
Middlesex | 71% | 71%
Choate | N/A | 66%
Hotchkiss | 70% | 63%</p>
<p>Teaching fellows are not unique to Lawrenceville nor is it unique to the math department. At Lawrenceville it is a two year appointment;other schools it is for one year. A teaching fellow is neither good nor bad. Sure, they do not have the experience, but they make up for that with enthusiasm. At Lawrenceville and elsewhere, they will be closely supervised. As you will appreciate when you get out in the job market, we all have to start somewhere.</p>
<p>Also note that fellows will have a BA at a minimum. When you go to college, while most TA’s will be PhD candidates, there are several instances where the TA is an undergrad.</p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter, @sharingift. Most schools have young teachers, whether they are teaching fellows or new teachers, or have 0 or 1 year of professional teaching experience. And regarding that piece of stats, all these schools have it within a close range. Besides, from my experience, an advanced degree is not a reliable indicator of an excellent teacher. The majority of the teachers in these schools do have the educational background, knowledge and teaching skills much better than most teachers in PS. It’s their work ethics and love (or lack of it) of the teaching job that make the difference.</p>
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<p>Exactly, and this is what I’ve found in the public school system as well. </p>
<p>@Benley, I’m merely responding to two previous posts that displayed concerns over teaching fellows and %faculty with advanced degree. </p>
<p>If it doesn’t matter, why do most of these schools (except Choate above, which had a relatively lower %) publish these figures?</p>
<p>The existense of a few teaching fellows on the faculty doesn’t matter. And the small difference between schools on % of faculty w advanced degrees doesn’t matter either.</p>