Rather than being trained and supervised, graduate teaching assistants in rhetoric and speech should be taught and advised. Teaching assistants, or graduate instructors, should be considered colleagues, not merely cheap labor to teach courses the rest of the faculty does not want to teach. The first step in establishing an effective teaching and advising program for graduate instructors, then, is to create a department atmosphere in which they are truly accepted and valued as teaching colleagues. At the University of Iowa, a three- to four-day pre-service workshop is provided for all new graduate instructors during which they are assigned to advisory groups led by experienced graduate instructors. New graduate instructors also attend a weekly seminar during which they discuss the content of their classes and issues such as responding to student papers and speeches, how to lead a discussion of an essay, and how to structure assignments to meet the goals of the program. Finally, graduate instructors are given increasing degrees of freedom in the classroom to learn their own skills, strengths, and limitations as teachers. (SRT)