Everyone wins when we talk about teaching, and the Lectureships will expand that conversation considerably. Through work, discussion, and reseach, Lecturers can improve the quality of the education of every student attending John Jay. The more we talk about our jobs with each other, the more we get involved and the more we care. Even the possibility of Lectureships has increased the range of discussion about our jobs, and every adjunct, myself included, is now circling around the Lectureships like a jackal who has spotted some choice piece of vulnerable meat. When we have incentives, we will work harder to earn them. The Lectureships serve as a middle ground, something to aspire to, then move beyond.
It would be great to be wrong about this, but it seems that under current hiring practices, in almost any college, an adjunct with an M.A. can receive near perfect student evaluations, earn stellar teacher observations, and create or compile educational materials in book or website format, and that adjunct would have the same chances of advancement as an adjunct who merely shows up every day and teaches the same adequate lessons year after year, and both of them would stand no chance at all against a recent PhD or ABD with no teaching experience or ability whatsoever. I work hard for my students because I feel a duty to them and to myself, but without something like these Lectureships, my career is better served by doing the bare minimum for my students and instead focusing on my own scholarship. As someone who sees teaching as a form of social justice, this bothers me profoundly.
Not to be too entirely preachy, but students' lives are directly affected by what we do or do not teach them. They deserve the best education we can give them, because it's our job and this is part of CUNY and it's most likely the only college they could ever afford to attend. The composition sequence is amazingly important to students' future success. It is where they learn to think critically, often for the first time, and without those skills, they will not succeed in school or get what they should out of life. If we have the opportunity to improve our students' education, it is our obligation to take it. We need to ask ourselves whose lives we're really striving to improve when we're teaching to those who need our lessons most.
Jordan Schneider
Adjunct Lecturer
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2 comments:
But is teaching a 5-4 load really going to result in better teaching? Maybe I'm misinterpreting you here, but if the most important goal is to better serve students, how on earth does it serve them to have an overworked professor grading 150 papers a week?
Your question is part of the conversation we need to have, and yes, even the possibility of so much work has encouraged us to figure out how to accomplish it. But to actually answer the question:
1. Don't assign a weekly, marked paper. Have them write, in class, and discuss their efforts. My students hand in work every two weeks.
2. Don't try to explain every grammatical error (I have tried to, but the research says it doesn't really make a difference).
3. A new one for me is to type out my overall comments rather than writing them. Believe it or not, this cuts down on my time by about half.
4. Use in-class writing and group work to help students develop ideas for their papers. I'm still trying to figure out how to make peer review more helpful than hurtful.
5. Assign papers that are fun to read and write (cuts down on the headaches).
6. Before the paper is due, have students summarize their papers and discuss them, so they can see their own strengths and weaknesses compared to their classmates.
7. On the due date of papers, spend time in-class addressing specific technical issues which the students can fix themselves (grammar, citation, form).
8. Show and explain the type of form, content, and organization you are looking for in student papers and explain why your demands are valid.
All teachers are inconvenienced by stacks of student papers, but the impossibility of using older methods will force lecturers to develop methods that can benefit all. To solve this problem, we have to punch right through it.
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