I will be teaching at four schools this semester ( 2 private 4 year institutions, 1 state 4 year university, and 1 two-year community college)...at least I think so.
I have found in the past that it is okay for a College to bump us at the last minute, but if we protect ourselves with double booking, and then have to back out of a class at the last minute, we probably will not be asked back the following semester.
Actually in New Jersey many colleges and universities stopped using 'Staff' a few years ago when our Community College adjunct local made a big fuss about it. Now they use 'TBD' or 'TBA'.
The big rush will begin on Monday to the copy machines to print out syllabi and other course work. I did all of mine while teaching Summer session. I made copies of syllabi for all courses I MAY be teaching, just so I would have them in case I do teach the course. This avoids last minute rushes and printer breakdowns and jams. It does weigh down my car. And speaking about cars, I wish our salary went up in the same proportion as gas did over the past few years. I am spending a higher % of my salary on gas every year, especially as a "Roads Scholar' travelling between schools.
WE ARE THE FACELESS NEW FACULTY MAJORITY
THESE REPORTS BY Campaign for the Future of Higher Education, New Faculty Majority, ADRIANNA KEZAR, GARY RHOADES AND OTHERS ARE USHERING IN PUBLIC AWARENESS OF OUR PLIGHT. WE NEED TO SPREAD THE WORD AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE IN ORDER TO GET OUR MESSAGE OUT THERE.
I didn't find out until a week before classes last semester that all of my classes had been given to a full-time faculty member. I was lucky to have been home to field a call from a four-year university asking for adjuncts to teach classes. And, I was hired after 3 interviews to teach at a "learning center" at a community college full time, then the position was withdrawn. It is making it hard to prepare for teaching, to say the least and I feel not able to martial my full competency, to say the very least. My sense of humor, sadly, is also deserting me.
ReplyDeleteBut not your sense of irony, which may be a prerequisite for maintaining as remote facsimile of sanity. As difficult as prep is under these circumstances, the uncertainty is worse. I've often felt that is deliberately cultivated to keep us off balance. Not "flexible time" but the precarity bind...
ReplyDeleteI hear you, Bill. I spent about 40 hours planning and designing a course only to be switched to a different one the week before classes started. It really makes it impossible to do anything really innovative and different.
ReplyDeleteLast fall, the Thursday before classes started, I was assigned a second class. I was glad to have it, but when I went to the bookstore to see what had been ordered, it was a text that looked interesting but that I would have needed at the beginning of the summer in order to plan out each three-hour class. So I opted for a new edition of a book that I'd used five or six years earlier. I wouldn't have chosen it since it was a paperback, a large paperback, to be fair, but it cost over $100, not ideal for many of my students. But at least I was familiar with most of it. I managed to stay one chapter ahead of my students, but it was clear to me, and probably to them, too, that I could have/should have/would have been doing a better job, had I had more than four days to prepare.
ReplyDeleteClasses for Fall 2012 start just after Labor Day. There are still courses listed on-line with Staff as the instructor. I can only hope, for the sake of the students enrolled in those classes, that IT is just behind in updating the schedule.
Bill, you're right on here. I won't bore everybody with the particulars of my (possibly) 6 course fall semester, soon to start, but let me just say, best to all of you "staff" borthers and sisters and let's keep our heads up and our voices strong as we get back to our work—teaching, grading, organizing, recruiting, advocating and challenging.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm hearing more about this semester are the large numbers of us who are down by more than 50% in our course assignments. I taught five last Fall, and have two courses this fall. Given the fact that the FIVE barely covered my expenses, I'm not desperately spending all available time looking for jobs - not teaching jobs, because I've had it. I'm looking for more work in freelance writing and editing (two other markets that have taken a terrible hit in the last ten years), and trying to expand my own creative writing classes and manuscript editing for other writers. So, if anyone knows of anything in those areas, please let me know.
ReplyDelete