How to Become a Lead Teaching Assistant

How to Become a Lead Teaching Assistant

Many of the courses offered by Herman & Wallace include hands-on learning, called labs. At lab courses, we require experienced therapists to assist the instructor in guiding participants through the hands-on component, called teaching assistants, or TAs. TAs are compensated for their time with course credit, earn CEUs, and have previously completed education in order to be qualified to assist others in learning new skills. 

Lead Teaching Assistants are those who go above and beyond by committing to volunteer for a certain number of courses per year, earn consistently high reviews on course evaluations, and meet minimum qualifications to assist at all courses. Lead TAs are onboarded as employees of HW and can therefore be paid for their time assisting at courses. 

The Lead TA position is by invitation. Since this is an emloyment hire by HW, we apply the same discernment as if we were bringing on a new faculty member of member of the admin team. Lead TAs are often chosen based on: 

  • Ability to represent HW as the envoy between instructor and participants and site hosts. This means being professional, kind, knowledgable, and authoritative. 
  • Ability to troubleshoot problems. TAs may run into unprepared site hosts and locked doors, or participants who are intimidated by lab work (or think they know it all and want to rule the room). Lead TAs show leadership skills by putting out fires, often before the particpants even smell smoke. 
  • Dependability - when you commit to TAing, we are couting on you so that the event can proceed. Those who have cancelled TA assignments last minute due to non-emergency reasons will not be considered for the Lead TA program. 

In addition the above, the following are the minimum criteria for becoming a Lead TA. 

In order to qualify as a LeadTeaching Assistant, one must:

  1. Meet the qualifications to assist at advanced level coursework of the Pelvic Floor Series, including the Capstone coures, which means that they have completed
  • Pelvic Function Level 1
  • Pelvic Function Level 2A 
  • Pelvic Funciton Level 2B OR 2C
  • Capstone courses
    • 2. Commit to assisting at least four courses per year without cancelling any assisting engagement
    • 3. Have previously assisted at at least five course events in the last two years
    • 4. Received positive reviews from course participants on past teaching assistant engagemnets - average 9/10 on the course evaluations 

If you are interested in becoming a Lead Teaching Assistant but not currently TAing at our courses, you may begin the application to do so here. If you are already a TA and would like to get on track to become a Lead, please contact the This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.