Second shoot

Shot my Bangladeshi electrical engineer for the second time yesterday. This time I walked away from the shoot with four pages of notes. How? Brought an ASE assistant along to do the taping for me; I listened in the earpiece and concentrated on observing. I'll still have to watch the tape at least once, and will probably do a bit of transcription. Have been on my toes ever since the shoot and haven't had a chance to reflect on it. Ideally, after a shoot I'll sit down for twenty minutes and write about it, but don't foresee that happening any time soon. Will definitely bring T with me as often as she's willing to come.

R has a command of the material and his pronunciation ain't awful. There are a few issues we'll work on. As is typical of international TAs, he has very high expectations of his students. They should have paid attention during the lecture; they should have done the pre-lab; they should know what's going on. When he introduced the lab he said multiple times, "it's very simple."

Well, simple it ain't. Not to this former English major, at any rate. And the students should be able to do the lab on their own without his help-- but he's paid to be there when they can't do what they ought. I've seen him get frustrated and basically do the work for the students: "No, the wire goes here" as he puts the wire where it goes. The trick, of course, the thing they're paying me to help him find, is to 1) identify the problems. 2) get the student to figure out the answer. Monitor, supervise, guide, but don't get impatient and do the work for the kid. That won't help her a bit.