With any topic I have confronted as a teaching assistant at York I have had (what may be) the luxury of being able to link the discussion to the real conditions of people. I have been able to draw parallels as diverse as those between the lives of hunters and gatherers of 10,000 years ago, and the families in which my students live; to display the similarities between the proletariat in the Industrial Revolution and the workers in the present day Maquila Dora zones; and to show the link between the glass ceiling and the stigma of Mother's Allowance. In the process I have developed a number of strategies for incorporating the outside world; perhaps the most important is to be honest, to apply a standard of openness in the way that I interact with the students in my tutorials. I take no credit for this strategy, as I had good TA's as an undergraduate at York and I have done my best to follow their example. I have also had the pleasure of working with passionate and gifted Course Directors. If I were to provide a recipe for excellence in teaching, each of these elements would be important ingredients.

My own strategies focus on making the class comfortable with the discourse generated by the particular topic or material. The challenge each year is one of making the students feel that they can question and discuss a set of issues that are at once both broad and foreign. To be successful I have had to bring the material to them, to connect it to things with which they are familiar. Current events are certainly a big part of such a strategy. The challenge for me has been to link the students to the material; beyond that, I have found that the work becomes a simple matter of providing direction.

In the process, I am afraid, I have learned far more from the students than I could have hoped to deliver to them. A brief list of lessons I have learned would need to include:

1. dead silence is not an effective probe if the students do not understand the text;
2. the debate between the Course Director and TA is of most interest to the Course Director and TA (most probably only to the latter);
3. what is a dissertation? why keep mentioning this thing?;
4. how does the material relate to the world of the student?

The last point is of greater relevance here and although I have no singular answer, I offer the following two anecdotes as examples of my approach.

In one summer course for which I was a TA, entitled "Women, Work, and the Family," there was a strong dismissal of many issues when we discussed Mother's Allowance. The discussion generated a class-based discourse that included some of the old standard objections: "some women have babies just to get more money," and "my mother always had a job." In response to these statements I deferred to the course texts and explained that those who need the system should not be stigmatized. One student approached me and asked if she could respond to the comments in a way that she thought might help me make the point; I agreed. The next week for her seminar presentation she showed up in the most ragged pair of tracks pants and a beer label t-shirt with what looked like a large chicken stain down the front. She stood at the door of the classroom with a can of beer, and a cigarette, and yelled "Johnny" repeatedly, then ranted to the class: "That little bastard... he's gone off again... I am going to kick his little ass." She then sat down at the front of the class and said "that is what many of you think women on Mother's Allowance are like." She then explained that she was able to attend school and care for her child because of Mother's Allowance. As she shared the reality of her existence the questions and comments from the students changed and the class learned something. I would never ask a student to do what she did, but I am glad that I knew enough not to get in her way. Maybe that is one thing that we can do more often: give room. By this I mean to create a space that we as instructors cannot define, and a space in which we become participants. How can we do this? I can say that it has only happened to me where I have become part of the class and not "in front" of the class. My second story involves a "crystalline moment" in my time at York as a TA. In the same course we discussed issues facing Native families in Canada. I soon found myself banging against that same wall that had surfaced during the earlier discussion on welfare and Mother's Allowance. At the time the media was foaming at the mouth over the "Native problem," and that debate seemed to thwart any discussion of the real problems; the discourse was limited to a veritable debate about what First Nations were "costing Canada." Some of the students were interested in the real issues at stake, but a significant number could not get over the notion that here was a culture that was "milking the system." One of the students, an orthodox Jewish student whose family had been directly affected by the Holocaust, was upset by this dismissal. She approached me about the class' response and I suggested that she read a short story, My House, by First Nations' author Beth Brant, a story that has always struck a chord in me as a Native person. The next class she spoke briefly about her family and then read the story. I still remember – very vividly – lifting my head as she read the last few lines and hearing the very quiet sound of students gently crying. That day we had a discussion (not a meaningless debate) about the lives of Native peoples in Canada.

"Nothing is outside, nothing is inside"¹ – we should listen well to Erwin's good advice to his friend, for this is the nature of ourselves and our students, and should also be the nature of our teaching.

¹ Hermann Hesse, "Inside and Outside" in Stories of Five Decades. Pennsylvania: The Franklin Library, 1984.