Lofty principles and long-term perspectives are fine, but most of us live day to day. Graduate students serve as teaching assistants (TAs), getting exposure to teaching and helping us do the job of educating our students. TAs do different tasks at different institutions: some run recitation sections, some teach their own class under the supervision[34] of a senior faculty member, some are handed the syllabus their first day on the job and told to go to it. In all cases, good TAs are a benefit to a mathematics department, both in the actual teaching of mathematics to undergraduates and in relations[35] with other departments and the administration[36]. Bad TAs, as measured by student complaints[37], are a liability[16] . To address this, many institutions offer TA-training (a better phrase might be TAdevelopment) programs. It might surprise some to learn not that this TA-training exists, but that it comes in a great variety of formats at different institutions. Formats include an intensive period during orientation[38] week, a summer course, a required semester course, a voluntary semester course, a one-hour-per-week or per-month program during each year, a similar program but only during the first semester of TAing. Some programs involve only new TAs, some involve new and a few experienced TAs, some involve all TAs, some are only for experienced TAs. Besides the diversity in both TA duties and TA training, there is diversity in how these are coupled, with programs spanning the range from minimal supervision and no follow-up as regards TA training to carefully[39] integrated and sustained mentoring.