A
male
age
36-40,
anonymous
writes:I am currently a TA at a university and I teach a lab course for pre-meds. The semester ends in a few weeks and there will be only one more lab session meeting next week. Other than talking with the students about class related material, I only joke and talk in a non-serious way about non-class material with a few students. There's one girl in the class I kind of like and I am wondering whether I should show it or not. I am not sure what to do other than possibly asking her out by email at the end of the semester. Although she seems kind of modest and shy and smiles alot, she may have a negative view of me. That is because she has shown up to my office hours a couple times, and I got irritated by a lot of the annoying questions that other students asked me. As a result, I was not helpful to her when she asked me questions and I regret the attitude I showed her. But when she has emailed me with questions, I have tried to be more helpfulWhat do you guys think?
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female
reader, anonymous, writes (14 November 2011): this may be against the rules at your university, so definately check that, it's against the rules at ours, and would result in instant dismisal
A
male
reader, anonymous, writes (14 November 2011): "I am not sure what to do other than possibly asking her out by email at the end of the semester."Well here's another possibility: wait until the teacher-student relationship has ended. See, it wasn't that hard at all to think of what else you could do now, was it?I suspect the reason you couldn't think of this rather obvious alternative was that you didn't like the answer.By the way, your teaching relationship doesn't end with your last class at the end of semester, but after she has received her grades. Even that assumes there is no possibility of her believing that you nor anyone you can influence will be in a position of power in her further education.Feel free to ignore this advice. But consider these two things. Firstly, in failing to follow the usual "protective practices" you are not doing what we paid you for. Which was to teach professionally. There will be words in your employment contract and in the University Rules about that, and the consequences are substantial.Secondly, if a failure to follow the protective practices leads to a upheld complaint about a "inappropriate communication" then you will never teach again nor be placed in any position of contact with either students or children. We really do take harassment and abuse of power that seriously.
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A
female
reader, Honeypie + ♥, writes (14 November 2011):
 I think as a teacher or teacher's assistant you need to maintain some sort of professionalism.. hitting on female students isn't it.
And honestly, you are being played...
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A
male
reader, Sageoldguy1465 +, writes (14 November 2011):
 I think there's never much of a good reason for a TA to get too close to one of his/her students..... Sorry, but that hot coed is off-limits to you for the time being....
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