Adjuncts are expendable commodities. When an adjunct is used up or begins to be problematic, s/he is relieved of duties and another adjunct moves in to fill up the empty spot. An adjunct becomes problematic by 1) pointing out problems within a course or department or 2) is brought to the attention of the administration for any reason or 3) fails to meet standards measured by student evaluations. So what's an adjunct to do? Here are some tips.
First, never point out a problem with a course, department head, or anything in the department. No matter what problems arise in your course, handle them yourself with a smile. This may mean giving out good grades for bad work, extending deadlines because of student laziness, or apologizing to your students for not teaching the class the way they want to have it taught as well as changing your methods to meet their requirements and expectations. Remember, you are a professional. There is no problem you cannot fix somehow. If college level pedagogical practices don't work, reach down to what you would use in high school, junior high....oh, heck. Try kindergarten. After all, the students are paying the tuition and thus your salary (puny as it might be), so give them what they want.
Expanding on this first point, I want you to be sure that you never complain about or to your department head. By all means, never admit you have been sick, dealing with a personal issue, or overwhelmed. Do not seek help or adivce. You are supposed to know everything; that is why they hired you. If you find your department head to be incompetent, don't complain to administration. Accept it as part of the way things are. The better the professor, the less that professor wants the job of department head. Most PhD's don't want the added burden of administrative tasks. They don't want to schedule courses, staff them, and (heaven forbid) deal with adjuncts. Chances are the person who has the job took it for the extra money involved and the smaller teaching load. Remember too, that any problems you experience add to the woes of the beleaguered department head. Your department head doesn't want those woes, so the easiest way to get rid of them is to get rid of the adjunct who brings them to his/her attention.
2) Administration is not your friend. I'm not sure they are anyone's friend, but they certainly aren't there to make the adjunct's life better. You belong to your department head, and the only time your name should come to the attention of administration is if you have been unanimously voted to be adjunct of the year, or if one hundred students are lined up at the registrar's office clamoring to take just one more course with you. Unfortunately, when a student or a parent of a student (Those helicopter parents are still hovering.) has any kind of a problem, the complaint will go directly to admnistration - usually a dean. Most of the time the complaint is not valid and easily cleared up. Case in point is the mother of a student who complained that I had failed her daughter's research paper without cause. I had in my posession a paper that was half the length, had no citations or bibliography, and was poorly written. I gave the student the benefit of the doubt and asked her to upload the final version rather than the "draft" she must have "mistakenly uploaded." No other paper was uploaded. Case closed. Still and all, this was a "problem" for the administrator who had been contacted. Just like a person who has been wrongly accused of something like child molestation, I'm wrong, even when I'm not.
Additionally, you don't want to complain to administration about your department head. Chances are they know exactly how incompetent your department head is, but since no one else wants the job.....
3) If you are on the "hit" list, all evaluations will be "problematic." It doesn't matter that the aggregate value of your evaluations is a 4.55 out of 5.00; if your deparmtent head says, they are problematic, rest assured they are. Of course, don't expect anyone to tell you why they are problematic or what the minimum score is for your school or department. When all else fails, your evaluation scores will be enough to make sure that your name is not on the next semester schedule. Chances are, the scores are problematic because you did something listed in 1) or 2) above.
All of the above creates a serious problem. Adjuncts are now appeasing students even when they shouldn't; they are participating in grade inflation; they are dropping their standards regarding all methods of student participation and performace. An adjunct who is concerned primarily with operaing under the radar cannot be a good teacher. An adjunct who does not feel that the department head is providing understanding help and support has nowhere to turn when a legitimate problem arises.
It's bad enough that in many educational institutions, adjuncts are made to feel as if they don't really belong. They have no offices and carry everything around with them (including laptops to the bathroom, so they won't be stolen), and often are left out of the loop regarding important information that is routinely sent to full-time faculty. Adjuncts rarely know the full-time professors and have no one to talk to, never mind seek advice from, regarding students or other school related issues.
Adjuncts teach well over 50% of the nation's courses. If we all decided to not teach for only one semester, we could seriously cripple most educational insitutions. Yet we are considered expendable.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Sunday, February 7, 2010
I would really appreciate it...
OK, I'm surprising myself here - two posts in two days - but this one is worth my time.
In my creative writing course, I assigned a scaffolding task. Students were to take a poem and use each line as an inspiration for a similar line of their own. This is a good way to get someone to write a first poem or to inspire a more advanced writer to try something a little different. The responses I received were quite good, and some students really enjoyed the assignment, but then there was the student I will call Dennis.
On the bottom of Dennis's response was the following "This was a stupid assignment. I picked the shortest poem just to get it over with. I do not nor have I ever liked poetry. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from giving us poetry assignments in this course."
Of course, I immediately replied to Dennis that the name of the course was CREATIVE WRITING and that the course did include poetry writing as well as short story writing. I pointed out that we did offer a course in creative non-fiction if that was more to his liking and that he could drop my course if he didn't like the contents.
What I really wanted to say was:
Dear Dennis,
Thank you for giving me a direction in which to take this course. I do so want to accommodate you as an individual, and I'm sure you know that every course here at _________ College offers the student the chance to design it as s/he sees fit. It is certainly a waste of time to attempt to present you with material in which you are not interested, and no students should have to do stupid assignments. Obviously, you have some better suggestions for assignments, and I can't wait to hear them.
I also want to thank you for reminding me that my graduate work and the student loans I incurred were all for nothing, since you, as a student, can see right through me as a teacher and have me pegged as just another stupid idiot trying to rob you of your precrious video game playing time. Please forgive me.
As a thank you, I'm awarding you the big fat A you probably want. No need to come to class; I can see that you are far too intelligent for that. Good luck. You are the student we all dream about.
OK, it's out of my systerm. I think I'll add some more poetry assignments and see what "Dennis" puts down on his evaluation. (see previous post).
In my creative writing course, I assigned a scaffolding task. Students were to take a poem and use each line as an inspiration for a similar line of their own. This is a good way to get someone to write a first poem or to inspire a more advanced writer to try something a little different. The responses I received were quite good, and some students really enjoyed the assignment, but then there was the student I will call Dennis.
On the bottom of Dennis's response was the following "This was a stupid assignment. I picked the shortest poem just to get it over with. I do not nor have I ever liked poetry. I would appreciate it if you would refrain from giving us poetry assignments in this course."
Of course, I immediately replied to Dennis that the name of the course was CREATIVE WRITING and that the course did include poetry writing as well as short story writing. I pointed out that we did offer a course in creative non-fiction if that was more to his liking and that he could drop my course if he didn't like the contents.
What I really wanted to say was:
Dear Dennis,
Thank you for giving me a direction in which to take this course. I do so want to accommodate you as an individual, and I'm sure you know that every course here at _________ College offers the student the chance to design it as s/he sees fit. It is certainly a waste of time to attempt to present you with material in which you are not interested, and no students should have to do stupid assignments. Obviously, you have some better suggestions for assignments, and I can't wait to hear them.
I also want to thank you for reminding me that my graduate work and the student loans I incurred were all for nothing, since you, as a student, can see right through me as a teacher and have me pegged as just another stupid idiot trying to rob you of your precrious video game playing time. Please forgive me.
As a thank you, I'm awarding you the big fat A you probably want. No need to come to class; I can see that you are far too intelligent for that. Good luck. You are the student we all dream about.
OK, it's out of my systerm. I think I'll add some more poetry assignments and see what "Dennis" puts down on his evaluation. (see previous post).
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Student Evaluations
Which administrative idiot thought up the concept of student evaluations? OK, the general idea is fine - give the students a chance to say a few words about the classes they are taking and the professors who teach them. After all, there are (sad to say) some professors out there who are dull and boring because, frankly, they are dull people who are bored to death with what they teach.
But hasn't administration caught on to the fact that students now see evaluations as ways to "punish" professors? At the end of the last semester, I heard one girl comment as she passed my desk. "He (referring to some poor unnamed prof) shouldn't have told me I couldn't do the assignment over. Now I'm going to give him a crappy evaluation." Her friend replied, "I'll write a bad one too." I felt sorry for the guy (whoever it was) because I know students have done to to a lot of professors - including me.
Students see themselves as consumers. They don't hesitate to tell you what they want when they want it, and if you don't give it to them.....well, you'll know it when the evaluations come back to you. For the full-time tenured professor, bad evaluations are probably just lunch laughs, but for the adjunct, it can mean the difference between teaching that course again, or never teaching it as long as you live. And there's nothing you can do.
Ignore the bad evaluations, and your department head thinks you don't care. Bring it up, and you look guilty as hell. You can't get out of this gracefully. Try to explain that the students ganged up on you because you gave them all bad grades on a group project, and you look like the bully throwing the poor hard-working students under the big, bad bus. When those innocent looking students didn't just throw YOU under the bus, they got in and drove it themselves. You can feel the bruises from the tires, but your department head doesn't see them.
Student evaluations are playing right into grade inflation. Be a buddy; cut the students all sorts of slack; laugh off late, shoddy, and missing assignments and give them nothing lower than a B, and you've got them writing a glowing (maybe) evaluation. But when you read those evaluations, you know you sold out to a system that values the students' input over your ethics, education, and integrity. It's sad, isn't it?
But hasn't administration caught on to the fact that students now see evaluations as ways to "punish" professors? At the end of the last semester, I heard one girl comment as she passed my desk. "He (referring to some poor unnamed prof) shouldn't have told me I couldn't do the assignment over. Now I'm going to give him a crappy evaluation." Her friend replied, "I'll write a bad one too." I felt sorry for the guy (whoever it was) because I know students have done to to a lot of professors - including me.
Students see themselves as consumers. They don't hesitate to tell you what they want when they want it, and if you don't give it to them.....well, you'll know it when the evaluations come back to you. For the full-time tenured professor, bad evaluations are probably just lunch laughs, but for the adjunct, it can mean the difference between teaching that course again, or never teaching it as long as you live. And there's nothing you can do.
Ignore the bad evaluations, and your department head thinks you don't care. Bring it up, and you look guilty as hell. You can't get out of this gracefully. Try to explain that the students ganged up on you because you gave them all bad grades on a group project, and you look like the bully throwing the poor hard-working students under the big, bad bus. When those innocent looking students didn't just throw YOU under the bus, they got in and drove it themselves. You can feel the bruises from the tires, but your department head doesn't see them.
Student evaluations are playing right into grade inflation. Be a buddy; cut the students all sorts of slack; laugh off late, shoddy, and missing assignments and give them nothing lower than a B, and you've got them writing a glowing (maybe) evaluation. But when you read those evaluations, you know you sold out to a system that values the students' input over your ethics, education, and integrity. It's sad, isn't it?
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