One way MFA programs provide funding to students is by hiring them as teaching assistants (commonly referred to as TAs) to teach writing classes in exchange for a stipend and, often, tuition remission and health insurance. While each program defines its teaching assistantships differently, in general there are a few things you should know before applying and preparing for one.

A number of creative writing programs give teaching assistantships to all of their incoming graduate students, but others have only a limited number of positions available. Typically program faculty determine which students become TAs based on the overall strength of the creative writing application, plus academic credentials such as undergraduate grade point average and GRE score. Preference is often given to candidates who have previous teaching experience.

The classes TAs teach vary from program to program, but they tend to be undergraduate introductory writing classes of some sort. Typical classes include introduction to literature, composition and rhetoric, and, sometimes, creative writing. TAs usually teach one or two classes a semester on top of their own course load.

Not all new TAs have had experience in the classroom. And those going directly from being an undergrad in the spring to working as a teacher of undergrads in the fall may feel especially intimidated. It's in the best interest of universities to assure that their TAs perform well, so they always provide some kind of training, but the rigor of that training varies. Some programs require TAs to attend pre-semester orientation sessions and sign up for first-semester seminars on how to teach writing. Such classes brief students on what the department expects from its TAs, as well as instructing them on the best practices for creating a syllabus, which texts to use, how to create assignments, how to inspire lively classroom discussion, and grading. Other programs require their students to work as tutors and/or with a faculty member first before taking on their own classes.

Along with taking the required preparatory courses, new TAs should also consider reacquainting themselves with the rules of grammar and punctuation. While most creative writers have an intuitive sense of what constitutes strong prose, they don't always have at the tip of their tongues (or pens) the rules that explain why. Part of teaching introductory writing involves being able to convey these fundamentals to beginning writers, so it helps to give yourself a brushup. Some resources to consider: The Elements of Style by William Strunk (Dover Publications, 2006), The Practical Stylist by Sheridan Baker (Longman, 1997), and Essentials of English Grammar by L. Sue Baugh (McGraw-Hill, 2005).

Not everyone is a natural-born public speaker. And a classroom of students—for many of whom your class fulfills a requirement—may not be the most engaged audience, which can make the most outgoing person slightly unnerved. The best way to combat pre-class jitters is obvious and important: Prepare and practice. Develop a lesson plan that includes an outline of talking points that you'll cover in class. (While you want to prepare exactly what you'll discuss, you don't want to read entirely from notes.) Practice your talking points at home—even in front of a mirror and using a tape recorder or video recorder to become aware of (and work at eliminating) any speaking tics you may have. The more you practice, the more comfortable you'll seem in front of the classroom. Practicing also gives you a sense of how much time it takes to cover any particular subject. Another tip: It helps to move around when speaking in front of a group. You'll burn off nervous energy and appear livelier. Note, though, that combining a suddenly quieter speaking voice with a focused physical stillness subtly but firmly grabs attention and asserts your higher status as teacher. It can be a powerful secret weapon.

Not everyone is a natural-born public speaker. And a classroom of students—for many of whom your class fulfills a requirement—may not be the most engaged audience, which can make the most outgoing person slightly unnerved. The best way to combat pre-class jitters is obvious and important: Prepare and practice. Develop a lesson plan that includes an outline of talking points that you'll cover in class. (While you want to prepare exactly what you'll discuss, you don't want to read entirely from notes.) Practice your talking points at home—even in front of a mirror and using a tape recorder or video recorder to become aware of (and work at eliminating) any speaking tics you may have. The more you practice, the more comfortable you'll seem in front of the classroom. Practicing also gives you a sense of how much time it takes to cover any particular subject. Another tip: It helps to move around when speaking in front of a group. You'll burn off nervous energy and appear livelier. Note, though, that combining a suddenly quieter speaking voice with a focused physical stillness subtly but firmly grabs attention and asserts your higher status as teacher. It can be a powerful secret weapon.

Along with talking points, include time for questions from students—be sure to have some of your own prepared as a way to engage a quiet class. Mix up lectures with other tasks such as free-writing exercises and student-involved activities (and have extra activities to draw from in the event that your class starts to become restless). Have students break into peer groups and collaborate on answering a set of questions or completing an assignment. This is also a good way to separate students who pay more attention to one another than to you. Remember to bring classroom exercises back to the day's lesson plan. And be sure to end the class with a reminder of what's expected of your students at the next meeting.

One of the biggest challenges for creative writing graduate students who are also TAs is time management. Depending on class size and the number of courses you'll be assigned to teach, you could be grading twenty to fifty papers every few weeks. That's a lot of time spent reading, let alone grading. TAs also are usually required to hold office hours, which are more time spent away from your own creative endeavors. From the beginning, work to develop a schedule for grading papers. Get a sense of your own rhythm and endurance: How many papers can you read before you begin to glaze over? What is your best reading time? What is your best writing time? Once you have a sense of this, make a schedule that is most productive for your working style and be vigilant about sticking to it. While grading takes time and energy, so does worrying about the huge pile of papers you've let build up on your coffee table.

Most programs have established methods for determining how well you're performing in the classroom. Some institute peer visits during which fellow TAs attend one or more of your classes and give you feedback on how they think you're doing. These can prepare you for formal assessments, during which a faculty member observes your class and later submits a written evaluation to the department under which your classes fall. Finally, your students usually have a chance to weigh in through end-of-semester evaluations, which are also submitted to the department. Such evaluations are usually shared with you. Take any feedback you receive seriously; there's always room for improvement. And a poor overall evaluation may threaten your receiving a reappointment for the subsequent year.

Being a TA is a serious and important responsibility. Doing it well often draws from the same energy source that feeds your own writing. So it's crucial to strive for balance between doing your best in the classroom and at your writing desk. But having teaching experience under your belt can be a tremendous boon postgraduation. If nothing else, it gives you a sense of whether teaching is a career path you want to pursue. The skills you learn along the way can also be applied to other occupations that involve leadership, the training of others, and public speaking. Perhaps most valuable, being a TA gives you the chance to help cultivate a wider appreciation for writing, and reading, in the public at large—and to build the audience for your own future contributions.