Negotiating the Paradox: Adjuncts & Writing

• More Perspectives

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  21 Jun 2010 /  adjuncts, blogging, tenure, writing
  AA 52 More Perspectives

   

  I’d like to continue last week’s process of breaking out of my own habitual limits by seeing the topic of adjuncts and writing from other perspectives.

   

  Consider the word from eHow, a popular site devoted to telling people how to do just about everything. eHow offers advice on “How to Become an Adjunct Professor.” This brief article is to the point and useful as far as it goes. It is also honest, noting that you can’t really live on adjunct teaching alone. The author is a composition instructor, freelance writer, and entrepreneur. I make a few observations, some of them snarky. First, I note that no mention of writing is made (big surprise). Second, I note that no mention is made of the relationship between adjunct positions and tenured positions. These seem to exist in different universes. Third, I note that the advice on getting tenure is given by someone who doesn’t have it—and the advice on publishing academic articles and publishing in scientific journals is boilerplate, minimally helpful, and given by an author who does not, as far as I can tell, publish in either. Fourth, I note that a number of my students use eHow as a reference for the content of their essays and for guidance on how to write. Fifth, I note ashamedly the grammar glitches in the materials written by the author of the guide on becoming an adjunct (less the article than other materials).

   

  Consider the word from the Adjunct Law Prof Blog, which points us to the ongoing issue of an applicant for a tenure track position who sued for discrimination in hiring practices when she didn’t get the job. I note that the blogger says, “It is very difficult-close to impossible in fact-to obtain a FT tenure track gig” and that getting a legal writing gig is almost as difficult as the practice professionalizes.  I also note, reluctantly, that this should be “loses” a lawsuit.

   

  Consider the word from Prawfsblawg, a collaborative blog from a number of professors at wildly varying schools around the nation. A recent post there discusses how to become an adjunct professor. Having multiple contributors to the blog helps widen our perspective, as different bloggers point out different ways writing would and wouldn’t count for would be legal adjuncts.

   

  And finally, consider this: this is my 52^nd weekly entry here. That’s a year. In the posts to come, I’ll continue looking outward, but I’ll also look back, to see what I’ve learned in a year of writing this blog.

   

   

  Tags: adjunct, how to get a job, perspectives

• Three Attempts at Perspective

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  07 Jun 2010 /  adjuncts, blogging, grading, publishing
  As we all try to make sense of the state of adjunct faculty, and try to write, it is easy to get caught up in the immediate: to focus on one’s own personal frustrations, or to step up no more than a single category and to consider adjuncts as such.

   

  That’s understandable, but it does not lead to a wider view of the issues. Today I’d like to touch on three attempts to put the situation into perspective.

  
  The first is a recent story in The Chronicle of Higher Education on outsourcing feedback on written assignments. Essays are sent electronically from colleges in the United States to “India, Singapore, and Malaysia” as well as to some graders elsewhere in the U.S.  These grading specialists provide written commentary on the essays; the company providing this “Virtual-TA” service bills per essay graded.

   

  This indicates that adjuncts are not just struggling for equality with the tenure track faculty at their employing institutions. They are workers in a global economy, and to the extent that services such as this catch on (and run smoothly), they will raise the pressure on adjunct writing teachers.  After all, there is a small step from virtual teaching assistant to virtual adjuncts.

  
  The second perspective comes to us courtesy of the Education Writers Association (EWA).  For more than half a century, EWA has labored as a professional organization to raise the level of writing about education. Their website makes a national survey on education reporting available for free here. While this dates from 2006, and is therefore a bit dated, it is worth reviewing because of the patterns shown in what gets written about. In 2005, over 60% of stories published “were about personnel/institutional issues, academics, and finance.” And what got written about least? “Grade inflation, class size, and faculty unionization,” the last two of which being topics directly impacting adjunct faculty. That leads to a second perspective: we’re not news. Our issues are not being addressed because they aren’t being written about. Therefore, if you want anyone to even know about them, you need to sit down and type. Let your next adjunct writing be a letter to the editor, the state legislature, a professional organization, or a local college.

   

  And the third perspective? A positive one.  The Hechinger Report is a recently announced news organization that will be covering education. They promise to report and blog regularly on community colleges, that pervasive but under-discussed element in the American college scene. I for one look forward to it, and will be commenting on their stories and post often.

  Tags: grading, labor, outsourcing, perspective

• Interview with James Levy

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  10 Aug 2009 /  adjuncts, blogging, teaching, writing
  It is easy for those of us who are toiling away as full-time adjuncts (if you’ll allow me that supposed oxymoron) forget how flexible and multifaceted that term is. It’s also easy for those of us working in traditional academic fields like English or history to forget the specialized demands of specialized fields. This week we’re fortunate enough to hear from James Levy, who will help us correct both of those failings. Levy was gracious enough to answer a few questions on adjuncts and writing, especially legal writing.

  AA: Why do you write?

  Levy: I write for two reasons. I enjoy the satisfaction that comes from exploring a topic in the kind of depth that can only be achieved by writing about it.   There’s an old saying that the best way to learn a subject is to teach it.  I’d modify that by saying that an even better way to learn a subject is to write about it.

  And the other reason I write, to be frank, is that I have to - it’s an expectation of my job.   I wish I could say that I love the writing process itself; I don’t.  I find it mentally grueling.  I love the last stages of the writing process when I’m polishing and the ideas that I’ve been struggling with really start to coalesce. Any remaining fog lifts and I begin to feel a certain mastery of the material.  That part of the writing process is very enjoyable and satisfying.  But getting to that point is terribly hard work.
   
  I remember reading something in William Zinnser’s book On Writing Well in which he says, in effect, that anyone who thinks writing is enjoyable probably isn’t working hard enough at it.  Like Zinnser, I also don’t understand people who say they write for “fun.”   To me, it’s about as much fun as standing in the hot sun with a sledgehammer breaking rocks.  

  AA: How does your academic writing relate to your teaching? How about writing that doesn’t qualify as traditional scholarship, such as blogging?

  Levy: I’m a legal writing teacher and because my classroom teaching is based on hypothetical problems that change from year to year, I don’t have the luxury of being able to concentrate in one field or discipline.  Instead, what I enjoy thinking about and writing about is teaching itself.  Both teaching generally and teaching legal research and writing - so that’s where I’ve done almost all of my writing.  I’m fascinated about the role the teacher plays in the learning process.  Why are some teachers successful at getting their students to learn and others are not?   My observation is that it doesn’t necessarily correlate with  traditional notions of intelligences (i.e. IQ) but instead it’s a difficult to quantify combination of traditional intelligence, an inherent understanding in how people learn, empathy, and ability to understand student personalities and how to motivate them, among many other qualities.  A lot of it has to do with the interpersonal relationship the teacher develops with the class and individual students.  It’s not a social relationship but instead a relationship that offers support and encouragement to students while also pushing them in the right ways.

  So that’s what I like to write about.  I’m fortunate in that my school, Nova Southeastern University School of Law, let’s me count “scholarship” about teaching towards my publication requirement.  Some schools don’t and that makes it especially hard for legal writing professors, or clinicians and librarian who don’t have a doctrinal specialty - to publish.  Traditional faculty publish in the areas they teach so their classroom preparation compliments their scholarship and vice versa.  But if your teaching specialty is skills and you’re not permitted to write about skills training - it’s doubly hard to find the time and energy to write about subjects that you are not also teaching.

  For the past 10 months or so, I’ve also been an associate editor at the Legal Writing Prof Blog which I’ve enjoyed very much.  It’s a much lighter kind of writing - I report topical stories that relate to legal writing and legal education generally.  That kind of writing is fun and I also derive some tangible benefits from it. I feel I’ve become much more knowledgeable about law practice and trends in the job market, the pressure lawyers are facing these days due to the terrible economy. It helps me better understand the anxiety of my students and also better prepare them for the skills they are going to need when they get into practice.

  Whether my dean will count blogging towards my publication credits remains to be seen.
  I should add that I’ve sensed a certain esprit de course among legal bloggers and have made cyber-friendships through blogging which also makes it a lot of fun.

  AA: How do you find time to write as an adjunct?

  Levy: For truth in advertising purposes - my normal day “gig” is a full-time legal writing professor at Nova Southeastern and University of Colorado School of Law before that.  This summer I was invited to teach two legal writing courses as a visiting adjunct at William Boyd School of Law in Las Vegas.  I find it hard enough to find the time to write as a full time faculty member.  As an adjunct who would also be working full-time —I don’t know how people do it.  I do know that some, like Mitch Rubinstein who edits the Adjunct Law Blog, have been very successful at publishing as an adjunct.  To me he -and adjuncts like him - have super-human qualities.

  AA: How have the institutions who employ you responded to your writing? (Do
  they support it? Ignore it? Even know about it?)

  Levy: I’ve gotten different responses depending on the school.  My experience has been that schools more highly ranked by USNWR, generally speaking, care less about skills training for law students than the lower ranked schools.  More elite schools are much more  focused on having faculty produce “paradigm-shifting” scholarship  and the placement of those articles in the most elite student-edited law reviews.  In that kind of environment, there isn’t much interest or support for professors—full-time or adjuncts—who teach skills training nor any writing we may produce that’s oriented toward the practice of law rather than theory. 

  At my present institution, the administration and colleagues are highly supportive of both the skills faculty and any writing we produce that relates to the practice of law or law school skills pedagogy  My school is pleasantly realistic about its role in producing students who can practice law so there’s a lot of support for what I do - both in terms of morale and financially. 

  It’s extremely difficult to find time to write during the school year as a legal writing professor.  There are so many demands upon one’s time.  Working closely with students who can be very stressed about grades can demand a lot of the teacher’s time, not only during the week, but also on weekends answering questions before assignment are due.  Legal writing profs are also constantly grading assignments throughout the semester, in addition to the time it takes to prepare for class.  And what doctrinal colleagues sometimes don’t understand is that our curriculum is built around hypothetical writing problems that often change from year to year in order to prevent plagiarism concerns or to just stay current.  Thus, we often have to learn a new problem, and the new cases that relate to that problem - each semester.  It’s a bit like being stuck in the movie Groundhog Day - each year can seem like one is starting over again as a brand new teaching with all the extra prep time that takes.  Although we gain classroom expertise over time just like our doctrinal colleagues, the need to change assignments each year and extra preparation learning new assignments requires can make it especially difficult to find time to write during the school year.  All of that can be exacerbated further if the writing teacher has a large number of students which, I did last year because I was teaching an overload. 
   
  And if the writing teacher is an adjunct who is also working full time during the day, teaching and meeting with students at night and grading on the weekends - it would seem almost impossible to find the time to write.  Although some do and to me these people are extraordinarily talented and dedicated.

  AA: What particular challenges/special attributes are there to legal
  writing/teaching legal writing? Does being an adjunct affect any of these at
  all?

   
  Levy: I think one of the most importance attributes for a legal writing professor to have is patience with students who are struggling with new material and are often frustrated that they are not getting the same results - in terms of grades - that they achieved at the undergraduate level.  I’ve found this to be more of an issue with younger students, fresh out of college, who generally comprise the day sections I teach. 

   
  One thing I’ve noticed this summer working as an adjunct is that maintaining morale can be a serious problem for adjuncts. One can be made to feel like a ghost - although we’re faculty, we don’t really feel like we’re part of “the team.”  Full timers generally don’t know our names - or even that we’re teachers rather than students - and it can be lonely and isolating to not feel connected to the institution in the way full time faculty are.  I guess that may be the nature of the best - we’re independent contractors hired to do a very specialized and limited task and then be on our way.  I hope this experience will make me more empathic to adjuncts at my own institution.

  AA: Any final thoughts on writing you’d like to share?  
  Levy: While I stated at the beginning of the interview that I don’t like to write because I find it incredibly difficult - I think that’s also what helps me be a good writing instructor.  I can really empathize with students who are intimidated by writing or don’t feel they are good writers because I do know exactly how they feel as opposed to a teacher who doesn’t struggle with their own writing as much.  I fervently believe that good writers are made, not born, so I try to inspire students that no matter how bad a writer they think they are, I can guarantee they can become an excellent writer if they are willing to work at it. 
   
  AA: Thank you!

  Tags: Adjunct Law Blog, Greg Beatty, James Levy, legal writing, Legal Writing Prof Blog, Mitch Rubinstein, Nova Southeastern, publishing, William Zinnser, writing

• Alternative Faculty, Alternative Writing

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  23 Jun 2009 /  blogging, writing
  As the Internet has flooded its way through every aspect of contemporary life, it has changed many things. One of the things net champions claim as a victory is the proliferation of blogs. According to Technorati’s “State of the Blogosphere 2008″ (http://technorati.com/blogging/state-of-the-blogosphere/), at that time there were 900,000 blog posts within the previous 24 hours! That number is still growing, as all estimates indicate thousands of new blogs are started daily.

  Besides being easy and cheap (in many cases free), blogs are celebrated as an alternative to mainstream media. They offer democratic options, a chance for the people to be heard, an interactive media versus a passive broadcast model, and so on. While blogs do all of these things, they can also be amateurish (in the best and worst sense of the word), intermittent, and orphaned by the official media and their makers. In other words, they are kind of like adjunct faculty members, and so I wanted to visit some blogs run by and for adjunct faculty, link to them for reader interest, and comment on what I see there.

  First, Online Adjunct Jobs (http://onlineadjunctjobs.blogspot.com/) offers simple information in a straightforward format. It doesn’t judge or comment: it just shares links and position descriptions with interested parties. (There are several other sites doing this as well, but not necessarily through a blog format.)

  The Adjunct Faculty Toolbox (http://adjunctfacultytoolbox.blogspot.com/) shares tips on teaching better and more efficiently, as well as tips on professional positioning, with interested adjuncts.

  Adjunct Central (http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/Adjunctcentral/player/index.aspx) is a blog from a publisher (Bedford /St. Martin’s). I found this fascinating: a publisher is so realistic about the nature of academic labor that it has set up their own site to support adjuncts. This includes sponsoring Adjunct Advice (http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/adjunctadvice), a blog where Gregory Zobel shares advice for adjuncts. (This recently moved to Bedford Bits: http://blogs.bedfordstmartins.com/bits/?author=160.) This advice ranges from the extremely practical to humor that borders on bitter tension release.

  pisspoorprof blogs on Burnt-out Adjunct (http://burntoutadjunct.wordpress.com/), and the blogger is as tired as the title suggests. This blog exists to air non-rhetorical questions rhetorically (no one is going to answer the question of what parents would say if they knew who was teaching their kids and what they were paid vs. what tuition costs), and to share specific challenges. Lowly Adjunct (http://lowlyadjunct.wordpress.com/ ) is just as tired, and shares just as much frustration with the world and workplace.

  The Unknown Adjunct (http://unknownadjunct.wordpress.com/) is somewhat less tired, and not accidentally, more fully linked in to other blogs. Adjunct Law Prof Blog (http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/adjunctprofs/) primarily focuses on breaking law-related news, but also provides updates about academic labor, especially those specific to law.

  At Blog U, Confessions of a Community College Dean (http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions_of_a_community_college_dean) addresses) offers an administrator’s perspective on running a community college, which means the blogger has to address adjunct labor (and repeatedly). Community College English (http://cce.typepad.com/) doesn’t focus explicitly on adjunct faculty, but given the nature of the gig…

  A 2004 article from The Chronicle of Higher Education sums up the story of the Invisible Adjunct, who blogged about the state of adjuncts: http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i34/34a01001.htm

  However, the link there to the archived blog goes…nowhere. The Invisible Adjunct is invisible once again.

  You know who else is invisible in this tally? The hard sciences. You can find any number of online job posts for faculty members who can teach chemistry, physics, etc. You can also find countless faculty members teaching science as adjuncts, and review their names, credentials, and pictures online. However, if any faculty members both self-identify as adjuncts and publish commentary about it online, I haven’t found it. Most often it is the folks in the humanities that do.

  One of the other ways in which invisibility shows up is in the use of pseudonyms. A number of these bloggers take on persona, in part to accent their authorial roles and in part, clearly, to protect their professional hides. Venting may be necessary. It may even be useful for the community if you’re articulating things that no one else will say. However, since there are usually reasons no one will say these things, saying them may come back to bite you in the, ahem, to haunt you.

  Besides venting and sharing, I see the writing done by and for adjuncts in the blogosphere as doing and indicating a number of things.

  First, adjuncts are using blogs and the Internet to find jobs. (Old news, I know.)

  Second, adjuncts are using adjuncts are using blogs to organize politically. (Newer news.)

  Third, publishers are using blogs to help adjuncts, but their choice to do so is a symptom of the current labor market.

  Fourth, adjuncts are using blogs to vent, but need to protect themselves as they do so. This perpetuates their invisibility.

  Fifth, individual adjuncts blogging often seem really tired and frustrated.

  Sixth, by contrast, collective bloggers or blogs that are markedly linked to other blogs aren’t defined as much by their fatigue and pain. A lesson, perhaps?

  Seventh, adjunct blogs are defined in part by a continual emphasis on practical matters, such as efficiency and economy. These are not traditional defining elements of academic discourse for higher education…though they’ve long been part of the conversation for K-12 teachers.

  And eighth, adjuncts can use blogs written by administrators to flesh out their understanding of the bigger picture and perhaps empower themselves.

  Tags: Adjunct Advice, Adjunct Central, Adjunct Faculty Toolbox, blogs, Burnt-out Adjunct, Community College English, Confessions of a Community College Dean, Greg Beatty, Lowly Adjunct, Online Adjunct Jobs, Unknown Adjunct

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