Let's Talk About... managing your relationship with your TA.

Let's Talk About...Managing Your Relationship With Your TA

Written by - Mrs C

I have been a teacher for 6 years and before teaching, among many other roles, I was a Teaching Assistant for a year. This gave me a slightly better perspective on how to manage a TA when I became a teacher myself.



Just to say, I may generalise and what I talk about is from my own experience. Please take my advice at face value and I’m open to questions about anything I say!


I’ve found that TA’s generally fall into two categories (here I go, generalising!): a young, eager TA who potentially wants a role within teaching or childcare in the future; an older TA who has been at the school for many years and has a wealth of experience. How you manage these two types may be very different. However, the advice I’ll give can be applied to both I would have thought.


As a TA, my wage was pittance.  I found that my teacher didn’t always grasp that. For example, we would be paid to help run year 6 boosters after school. The teacher was also paid extra. She flippantly remarked at how she’s quite happy doing an extra lesson for the £25 she’s getting. I responded with the fact that in the same hour, I earnt £6. She was shocked and I think that’s something we as teachers need to remember. Teaching Assistants are paid very little to do a job that has increasing responsibility and pressure. 


As an NQT, you may be excited to get in to the classroom and offload all your wonderful new ideas at once. My advice is to do that – but do it slowly. Have a clear rationale about your changes and get your TA on board with that rationale by introducing new things slowly. Some TA’s can be set in their ways or resistant to change – as long as there’s some reasoning behind the change, you’ll be more likely to get them on side.


It’s also important to pick your battles. Does the wonky display really matter? If it bothers you that much, change it yourself. You won’t have the time or energy to fight every small thing, so choose wisely what matters.


Listen. I cannot stress this enough. Your TA is likely to have been at the school a very long time and will have more experience than you, regardless of your teacher training. If they feel listened to, you’ll build a respectful relationship with them and you’ll become more of a team.


That being said, there’s a balance. Don’t let them completely take over. Make sure your ideas are heard too. If it isn’t working, tell someone. Your mentor or a member of SLT can help resolve initial problems smoothly without it upsetting the situation more. Your TA may be nervous about working with an NQT – be careful that you don’t come across too overbearing or condescending.


Building a relationship with them is key – ask them about themselves. Take the time to talk about something that’s not related to the classroom. Find out when their birthday is and gift them a card or some flowers if possible.


Use them wisely. Involve them in your planning as much as possible. Give them daily briefings of your expectations – “today you’re working with the blue group in literacy. This is the model text I will be teaching them. I would like blue group to be able to pick out these key spellings and write sentences in their book. Please make sure that Billy’s handwriting is neat as it’s his target” – and do the same for any other lessons. Having resources and expectations clear will let them get into the right headspace for the day. Be clear about those in between times (what should they be doing during your input?). Give them a list of readers that they could work through throughout the day in those last few minutes of a lesson. Their priority should be working with the children as much as possible. If they are running interventions, give them time to plan and resource them.


Give them notice of any observations that you are having. Share your feedback. This is something I didn’t tend to do because I didn’t want my TA’s ‘judging’ my ‘bad’ teaching but actually, they feel just as responsible during your observations. Give them the positive and negative feedback and you can work together to fix it for the next one.


Finally, and most importantly, thank them! They’re a golden nugget of knowledge (they’ll always know how to sneak you more glue sticks!) and work very hard so make sure they feel respected and appreciated.