I am an international student, and now pursuing my Ph.D in pure Math in a not very good (ranking 70+) and relatively small state university in U.S.
As usual, I am a supported TA, and I am wondering whether the teaching load here is too heavy.
The department supports about 50 TAs in total. There are two types of TA here. For those who have not passed the Speak Test (which is another awful thing), they can only serve as graders, and are expected to work 12 hours in grading hws per week. For those who passed the Speak Test, they have to teach 3 or 4 sessions of recitation every semester.
Based on my experience, I feel so tired after a whole week's work as TA that I have little time or energy to do research. And I once heard that in some (private) universities, a typical TA job consists only teaching two recitations per academic year...
My questions are the following. (To be precise, I only care about a TA duty in math major.)
What does a typical TA duty (especially the working hours) look like in a state university and in a private university? Especially, is it true that a TA in a state university usually works longer in his/her TA duty than the one in the private university?
Is the TA duty here reasonable compared with other state universities?