The Micromanaged TA

Last semester I TA'd for a wonderful professor who largely believed in letting his TA's teach their discussion sections according to their own whims (and by whims I mean expertise, ahem). This semester, I'm afraid I have a micromanager. Furthermore, he keeps giving us "activities" for which we need to ask for "volunteers" in our sections. Volunteer is a ludicrous word in the classroom. It requires some brave kid who is willing to risk being labelled a brown-noser from day 1. The word I hate even more than "volunteer" is "role-playing." So when my professor asked us to find volunteers for a role-playing activity, I wanted die. The problem is not just the cheesiness, which I will admit turns me off, but that as I student I would never have volunteered which makes me feel like a big hypocrite. It's hard to sell something you're not buying. Also, and this is probably a bigger problem: I am not the most organized person on the planet. I've adapted my teaching in the past in ways that don't require splitting groups into subgroups, collecting email lists and so on and so forth. This fun little classroom game, however, has morphed into an organizational nightmare with some students volunteering then bailing out, too many on one side not enough on the other, students without emails I can't get a hold of, etc... Then I start thinking, if this was my own activity, I would just split them in half, make everyone do it and make it part of their grade not some vague "extra credit." Hopefully, come Monday this will prove to be a wonderful educational experience. But either way, its clear that I'm working with a micromanager, and I'm none too pleased.