Salmon or Sardine?

Being an adjunct (part-time) college instructor is a lot like being an intern. Our pay may be slightly better, but the power dynamic is the same. The “customers” (in our case, students) think we’re on par with the higher-ups because they don’t know any better, but the other staff and faculty knows the truth: we are simply houseflies. Despite our passion and our abilities, we can only make so much noise. A small amount might get us noticed, but too much and someone comes out with a rolled-up newspaper, ready to swat us down. This makes feeling invested in a college campus and feeling like you are a contributing member of the faculty a very complex thing. And God forbid we have any constructive criticism to give! That is very dangerous water, indeed.

Now, I am very passionate about my job and, at the risk of sounding conceited, I think I’m pretty good at it. This can also be a dangerous position. On the one hand, you want to show ‘em what you’ve got; however, this makes people (full time and adjunct alike) a little nervous. I am also an instructor who believes in the humanity of the classroom – and my students – and one who talks to students as people. This can also be dangerous ground because I often find myself a reluctantly willing confidante to students bemoaning their other instructor’s teaching styles. I can sympathize as a student and as an instructor because I understand the complications of instruction and the hardship of having a teacher who simply isn’t a good fit for my learning style. But what do I do with this information?

Often, I find myself with names of instructors who, in my opinion, should be consulted by the higher-ups and coached into more modern styles of teaching. Long gone are the days when Composition instructors are taught to lecture, slap letter grades on work, and bury their noses in books during test time. Yet there are some who still adhere to these practices. Don’t get me wrong. I do not mean that any instructor intentionally uses a teaching method that s/he knows will not benefit the majority of the classroom. For the most part, I believe it’s a matter of time. Those who graduated 10-15 years ago were taught very differently and, therefore, carry those practices into their classrooms. Those of us who graduated more recently and by more progressive teachers (thank God for the CSUF English department) have simply had a different teaching “upbringing” that really honors student knowledge in addition to instructor knowledge. But this does not solve my dilemma. What do I do when I hear of instructors who are not teaching in a way that enables learning?

This is when I have to ask myself... am I Sardine or Salmon? Do I go with the flow like my little silver friends or do I follow the salmon and dive head-on into rushing waters? Do I risk the hatred of a colleague who may discover my “tip-off” to the dean who will, no doubt, miss my intentions to help everyone benefit from a little change? Or perhaps I tell students to do the “tipping” themselves to avoid any finger-pointing in my direction. But either way, I’m a rat, right? Either way, I’m screwing over fellow adjuncts (or, gasp, full-timers) who are struggling to pay the bills and get classes. But how do I justify to myself and to those damn-confessional students that their paying for a class in which they’ll learn only to listen, regurgitate information, and predict instructor expectations is really education? And when I think of how many students filter through (or only make it through part of) each class each semester, it makes being a “tattle-tale” feel more like vindication.

But it’s even more complicated when I think about the bigger picture. Okay, so let’s say I turn Salmon and report an instructor... and the students benefit. That’s a HUGE success. However, what if others catch wind of my “tip-off.” So here are my questions to you. Is my action seen as a good or a bad thing to faculty? Is this spunky little Salmon rewarded for her tenacity and granted respect and maybe even... gasp... a full time position? Or is she a troublesome upstart that gets snatched up by the hungry wading bear, damned to the academic equivalent of death: part-time teaching for eternity. So, what should I be... Salmon or Sardine?

The Journey of a Thousand Miles...

A few weeks back, I had the great idea to blog about how unmotivated I was to plan for my classes. I figured that most people could relate to the dynamic tension of mild anxiety in knowing something big is coming up and the complete lack of desire to fix the problem. Unfortunately, I procrastinated too long and now the semester has begun. C'est la vie.

So, yesterday I taught my first class of Spring 2010. I did actually force myself to plan and, as I was reviewing the Course Outline (the state mandated requirements for what teachers must do in a particular class and what their students must be able to do before passing) I was a little surprised at how rudimentary the exiting skill requirements are. Now, I have taught very similar classes and I do know that some people really do struggle with writing. I get that and I am more than happy to help my students wherever they are in their writing process. But what concerns me are the low expectations placed upon some of these "lower level" students. We ask students to jump through academic hoops simply because of poor test scores and then require the bare minimum from them because we think it's what they can handle. Yesterday, I sat with 34 of those "low level" students. I looked out into the sea of students before me and asked them what they assumed their role would be in my class. Amongst the answers of "come prepared," "listen," and "write a lot" there were little snippets of insecurity. One student even said he assumed that I would have trouble reading his papers.

So what does it say to that student, who is already insecure of his writing and aware of his weaknesses (although probably completely unaware of his strengths) that he is only expected to know the basics of a paragraph upon exiting my class? Some might say that it's freeing - he doesn't have to become overwhelmed by high stakes and pressures. But I say that it speaks far more loudly about what we assume he cannot do and, God forbid, what he might be able to learn in the 17 weeks he's in my class. I have worked with students all the way up into critical thinking classes who can't put together a solid academic paragraph, but we're going to tell these basic writing students that is their primary goal? It's a place to start, but what about what they'll actually learn? What about their ability to come up with original ideas and have the confidence to get them down onto paper, even if it's not the most eloquent things you've ever read? What about the student who has never turned on a computer, but who now sits in my computer lab and will have completed an entire semester of blogging by the middle of May 2010? That student will have written (no... typed!) around 4,000 words in her blog alone! That doesn't include homework assignments or any formal essays and drafts. That's an accomplishment and all we want to say is that she'll learn the basics of writing. It sounds like an understatement to me.

I am not, by any means, saying that most teachers intentionally think less of their students than they deserve, but I have heard this mentality surface amongst my colleagues on several different campuses and even in various conferences. I think it needs to change. Often times, the composition teacher is the advocate for the downtrodden. We take a subject that most people detest, not because it is horrible, but because students are incredibly insecure about their ability to do it successfully, and try to make it interesting. If we continue to think that English (insert any class number) students can only do X, we are setting our students up to think that is all they can do. That does not mean that I'm going to walk into my basic writing class tomorrow and ask for an 8-10 page paper, but it does mean that I'm going to walk in assuming that, in a few more English classes, they will be able to write that paper. We must teach the foundational elements before we expect masterful academic writing, but that doesn't mean that we can't expect greatness from each student in every class. Expect it, let the students know that you believe they can produce it, and expect to be surprised.

Passion Versus Procedure

There is an amazing modern poet named Belle Waring who has written a poem entitled “From the Diary of a Clinic Nurse, Poland, 1945” in her book Dark Blonde: Poems. In it, the clinic nurse tells us of her encounters with a feral Jewish child who was left in the woods in an attempt to save her from the concentration camps. She, the lowly nurse, tries to do what it takes to connect with this child – to help her become human again – but the doctors and specialists scoff at her efforts even when they seem to work. But Waring writes it better than I could ever retell it, so here’s a short excerpt from the poem:

I lay on the floor like a pup at play. I lay there and begged for the Blessed Virgin for Her help and was seized quite suddenly with weeping. The child fixed me with a concentrated stare, then crawled over and sniffed my hand: carbolic soap and tears, if indeed these have a scent. // More doctors came and she fled then to her corner as they shouted at my lack of dignity. // I need the work. I did not shout back.

I have not been teaching long (in the grand scheme of things), but this is how I often feel as I reach out and try to engage my students. (Please don’t get me wrong. I am, in no way, saying my students are feral animals; however, the sentiment still seems to apply.) I make myself vulnerable, put myself out there, try to gain the trust of some who have never trusted a teacher, and, if I’m lucky, they try to meet me halfway. But I think that is the goal of most teachers. Why else would we teach? What has recently begun to weigh on my mind is how we are able to do this. I’m sure anyone who has ever taught part-time anywhere can identify with the last stanza of the poem. We may do things differently. We may feel that our ways are the right ways to do them – the more “progressive” way – but we can’t shout back because we are lowly part-timers.

So how do we fix this? What should we do when our passion and our abilities contradict the procedures in our academic institutions? This is a question I am currently trying to answer. This has been my “you’re-not-quite-doing-that-according-to-standards” semester and, even though what I do gets my students to think, write, and to think about what they’re writing, I have to change it. And I do understand that without standards some people will take advantage or go in without a sense of accountability. But what do we do when what we are told to do contradicts something that is good and working? The only answer I’ve been able to create is that we compromise. Change what is working so that it doesn’t quite fit your plan, per se, but it does fit the procedures. But how far will compromise take us? I’m not proposing a revolutionary overhaul of the system. (I like my job, thank you very much!) But what would it look like to start petitioning for changes on a statewide level? Not random changes, but thoughtful researched-backed changes that would better the standard of education for our students? I think that it could be monumental. Right now, it seems that the truly progressive changes in education are popping up in state colleges and universities, which makes complete sense – publish or perish would cause these faculty members to be “in the know” about current shifts in pedagogy. But then people like me – recent grad students – are filtering into the community college system and seeing a discrepancy. This is frustrating. And even those of you who teach at the K-12 level probably left your credential program feeling passionate and excited, only to dive into an untenured position wrought with test-based materials and thought to yourself, “Where did all the teaching go?”

Here is my question to you. What would it look like for a group of progressive-minded individuals to strategically and tactfully address the issues that we see at the state level so that teachers would have a little more freedom to teach in the best way possible for their particular set of students, without endangering the careers of our hard-working supervisors? I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas on this matter so that perhaps, with your help, we can make a difference.