Adjuncts Save

On Tuesday, I got into work late because I spent the morning driving through the snow and going on various wild goose chases at the local community college. (See my previous post.) I almost couldn't find a parking spot at the university and had decided that if I couldn't find a spot in the parking garage, it was going to be a work-from-home day. Between the icy sidewalks and my hip pain, I wasn't up for a long trek. Fortunately I found a spot on the roof of the parking garage.

When I got into my office, my Chair almost immediately stopped by and said "Hi Waning," with a huge smile on his face, so I knew something was up.

...

Let me backtrack.

In August, I mentioned that I was dreading this year like no other. Some of that has to do with a change in Chair and the slow decline of instructor status since that change. But most of it had to do with the fact that I had a rough semester last spring and was feeling very bitter throughout the summer. Most of the trauma centered around a course that I was not planning to teach, but then ended up teaching somewhat last minute. It is a course that I've taught before, but had decided not to offer because I noticed that the enrollment was declining and I wanted the chance to try to develop an online course and teach that instead. The Chair had approved this, the schedule was set, and students had already started enrolling, when apparently the Chair was informed that another department, unbeknownst to us, had made my course a required course for their program and demanded to have it put back into the course lineup. After much ado and reshuffling of schedules, I ended up swapping courses with another instructor so that I could teach this course, because at the time I was actually the only person who taught this course (which is good for job security, I guess).

Unfortunately, this didn't turn out well. For one, I was already trying to develop a new, online course (which, by the way, is an assload of f-ing work), and I basically had to redevelop this course as well - to the extent that it was practically as much work as a new course prep. This meant I essentially had two new course preps in one semester. I usually teach this course in an intense, week-long format; I taught it this way for the first time right before my son was born, so I could squish my fall teaching load into the summer and pre-term session in exchange for the fall off. Even 33 weeks pregnant, it went so well that I've never taught it in semester-long format since then. (Then again, my son was born six weeks early right after I finished teaching it, so maybe it wasn't the best idea, but that's a different story.) When I taught it in this accelerated format, the students were very motivated and focused, and the class was usually on the small side - never more than 40 people. I was also able to give the class my complete attention, whereas when I taught it during the semester, it tended to get somewhat lost in the shuffle.

So last semester, I was faced with teaching this course in semester-long format for the first time in three years, to 120 students who were pissed they had to take it. Since I had never taught this class with more than 60, and in more recent years not usually more than 20-30, I had to redo pretty much everything - mostly based on the fact that there was no way I could do that much grading (keeping in mind that this was just one of three courses I was teaching). I did the best that I could, but in the end that wasn't enough. I don't have the energy to go into the details, but I definitely finished the semester feeling extremely burned out and frustrated by a number of the students, by the fact that I had to teach more students in one class than many instructors teach in an entire semester or even year, by sooooo many things. And then, our teaching evaluations were posted and I pretty much lost it. As people later pointed out to me, they weren't actually THAT BAD; however, they were bad for me. In fact, I've only gotten worse evaluations for one course, ever, and that was my first semester at this job.

I could say a lot about teaching evaluations, but I'll just say a few things here. We are rated on various things on a scale from 1-6, and our evaluations are actually posted publicly. I don't think most people would actually stumble across them randomly, but of course all the faculty look at each others' evaluations, even though no one will admit to it openly. Although everyone seems to agree that evaluations don't tell the whole story, in the same way that the average temperature in Santa Barbara, CA, is the same as the average temperature in Chicago, IL, there's no evidence that instructors are really evaluated based on any other criteria. So evaluations matter. While a few really negative comments seem to be pretty much inevitable, it's still hard not to take them personally. And apparently this never gets better; I've had many conversations with people with 30 years of stellar evaluations who still get really upset over a few bad comments here and there. Probably the hardest part of it was that I usually get a few 1's here and there - again, pretty much inevitable - but this was the first time I've gotten so many 1's. Something a colleague once said to me pretty much sums up how I feel about 1's. He said, "I'm not saying I'm the greatest teacher ever, but I know I'm not a 1. If I get 1's, it's personal."

...

Anyway. I met with my Chair over the summer and told him I didn't want to teach the course anymore. Actually, I didn't go in to tell him that I didn't want to teach the course; I really went in to see if he could provide some guidance/leadership - like... you know how in some places the more experienced people mentor the less experienced people? Just a thought. (Note the sarcasm.) However, he just immediately volunteered that I didn't have to teach the course if I didn't want to, and that was that. Like... oh, your hip is hurting? Let's cut it off! In the end, I agreed I would teach the course in week-long format at the beginning of the fall term, but not in the spring. And then I ended up having to drop the fall course.

Enter: Adjunct to the rescue! 

So ever since my fallout last spring, this course has been taught by an adjunct, and seems to have fallen into the category of "class that will always be taught by an adjunct" - at least in the mind of the Chair. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your perspective, many adjuncts eventually realize that they are being exploited, and leave. Which is what happened with this adjunct. After all, it is not difficult to find a job that pays more than $6,000/semester, which is about what this adjunct was making teaching 150 students in my former course + two labs. Since this adjunct had said he would teach the course in the spring as well, it leaves us in somewhat of a bind. And it puts me back into the same situation I was in a year ago. And it is the reason that on Tuesday, my Chair acknowledged my existence, and came into my office and said hi to me for the first time ever. Because now we're back to me being the only one who teaches this course. Unless, of course, we can find another adjunct, which is exactly what my Chair agreed to try to do. So I'm keeping my fingers and toes and eyes and heart and every other body part that can cross, crossed. There must be another sucker out there who can save me.