Negotiating the Paradox: Adjuncts & Writing

• Adjuncts and Grading Writing

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  30 Mar 2010 /  adjuncts, grading, teaching, time management
  One of the factors defining academic writing, and distinguishing it from writing in the rest of the world, is that it is graded. Grading is an area of ongoing debate in academia, especially grading writing. Do a search on grading and you’ll find discussions of methods, criteria, standards—as well as a steady string of anti-plagiarism screeds and the occasional wincing humorous (or is it “humorous”?) essay on student bloopers and accidental self-exposure. Grading is time-consuming, exhausting, and marked by student resistance in particularly vivid ways.

  One of the more complicated and under-examined aspects of the swamp that is grading is how it is changing as adjuncts make up an increasingly larger percentage of academics. This change shows up in multiple areas.

  I teach for more than one school, and each school wants to serve its students well. However, what “well” means varies according to context. What’s more, several of the schools also want to help their adjuncts teach well, and several of them want uniformity across the curriculum. In practice, this means providing things like rubrics to help adjuncts grade.

  That’s all well and good, but it is another place where good intentions lead…well, let’s just say elsewhere. I’ll focus on rubrics as an example. Each school that I teach for that provides rubrics provides two things: flawed rubrics and standards I don’t completely believe in. Both are understandable. It’s hard to imagine a perfect grading rubric, and it’s equally unlikely that your basic cranky and opinionated composition instructor (me) would agree fully with anyone else’s standards. However…there’s also a third factor in place, and a fourth, and a fifth, and maybe more.

  The third factor is that the rubrics I’m using aren’t just imperfect (that’s the nature of reality). They are someone else’s imperfection, to the point where there are items on the grading scale I don’t understand. My rule of thumb is, if I don’t understand it, my students likely don’t understand it.

  The fourth factor is that these rubrics come from different sources at the different schools, and those sources are often a) collective, b) unknown, and c) likely to change over time. In practice, this means that there is no one to ask if I don’t understand a rubric I’ve been given in most instances, because those handing it on don’t know how it was produced, or know who wrote it but that person is gone, etc.

  The fifth factor is that only one of the schools I teach for (Baker College) has been willing to pay for the time needed for the adjuncts to grade as a group and achieve some degree of uniformity. That means that in practice, even clearly articulated rubrics that I think I understand vary wildly in application. (For example, I’ve been told to fail students for 1 plagiarized line and to not deduct points for anything below 16 percent plagiarism…by administrators in the same school. I’ve also had another administrator tell me that an A in spelling and mechanics meant a paper was excellent, and a B meant it was good, C average and so on…but when I quantified that, I was told that 40 spelling errors wouldn’t lower the grade below A in that category. )

  Taken together, the result is grading writing that is inorganic to the instructor and more time-consuming than allowing adjuncts to generate their own rubrics. It creates the side effects of control (fear of failure, a sense of being watched) without any of the raised quality or uniformity it is intended to produce. It is also, quite frankly, a model of wretched scholarship. These rubrics are written by…someone. Somewhere. They appear and are to be applied, like Wikipedia entries, but with the power to distort your GPA.

  Don’t get me wrong. I had tenured faculty do a wretched job of grading my writing on both the undergraduate and graduate level. Some of those experiences are legendary. But those standards and experiences were not institutionally imposed. They were the result of quirky faculty members.

  This new structure of writing grading creates a kind of weary and bureaucratic hypocrisy for the adjuncts who grade writing.

  Tags: Baker College, grading, Greg Beatty, writing

• Two Writers, One Adjunct, Two Lessons, One Lesson?

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  23 Mar 2010 /  time management
  I received a brief and surprising email today. The first surprise was that the email arrived at all. You see, I’d emailed Elizabeth Strout, whose complex and often lovely novel in stories Olive Kitteridge. (If you haven’t read Olive Kitteridge, I highly suggest it. There’s a reason it won the 2009 Pulitzer for fiction.) I’d contacted her to see if she was interested in being interviewed for this blog, since she had published a number of short stories while teaching as an adjunct at Manhattan Community College (and being a wife and mother).

  The second surprise was that Ms. Strout managed to turn down my request for an interview graciously: she expressed gratitude for being asked, but indicated that her work schedule was “too strict” to take part in such an interview at present. 

  In between classes today, I visited a number of humor sites, for a much needed break. I also visited a blog for freelance writers, the Renegade Writer blog. There I read a post from Linda Formichelli, a nonfiction writer who is a bit of a name as a professional nonfiction writer. She’s published half a dozen books, and regularly writes for magazines such as Wired and Family Circle.

  Today’s post discussed Ms. Formichelli’s recently commitment to cutting back her writing time while maintaining her income, so that she could spend more time with her young (one-year-old) son. She did this in part through stopping her visits to an online writers’ forum (which she found too addictive), as well as stopping her visits to…some of the online humor sites I’d visited today. Hmm.

  To be fair, eliminating her Web habits weren’t the only changes she made. Formichelli also recruited help in changing her habits and increasing her level of focus (from her husband and a writing buddy). However, the synchronicity of the two writers made for a message even I couldn’t miss, dense though I may be.

  Having young children—as Formichelli does, and Strout did—is one of the more universally acknowledged ways to disrupt both your focus and control over your time. New York, where Strout lives—is a city seemingly designed to seduce one away from plans with its explosion of temptation, and I can’t imagine living there on adjunct wages. (Ye gods!). That said, Strout managed to make major strides towards being a writer who would win top prizes in American literature while still an adjunct, while Formichelli managed to cut her work week back markedly while maintaining her income…at a time when the magazine publishing world is imploding.

  I therefore thank Elizabeth Strout for turning down my request. I’d rather have another page written on her next book than an interview with her—and her lesson for adjuncts is as clear as any one could want. Adjuncts can write. Adjuncts can write great things—if they take control of their schedule. And though she’s a freelancer rather than an adjunct, Linda Formichelli would agree.

  Tags: adjunct, Elizabeth Strout, freelance, Greg Beatty, Linda Formichelli, Manhattan Community College, Olive Kitteridge, Renegade Writer, time use, writing

• The Role of Market Correctives

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  16 Mar 2010 /  adjuncts, teaching
  Recently I dipped in to the January 11, 2010 edition of the world’s best magazine, I mean, The New Yorker. There I found “After the Blowup,” an essay by John Cassidy about how the various schools of laissez-faire economics are dealing with—or failing to deal with—recent economic crises. As author of How Markets Fail, Cassidy is well-positioned to write such an article. While the article is worthwhile in itself, I mention it primarily as a springboard.

  When Cassidy was talking with Richard Posner, Posner was criticizing academic economists for their lack of realism, and for their failure to learn from the recent events. Posner said,”…market correctives work very slowly in dealing with academic markets. Professors have tenure…They have techniques that they know and are comfortable with.”

  While part of this unintentionally ironic—Posner seems not realize just how many faculty don’t have tenure or the option of pursuing it—the core sentiment is strikingly valid and useful. As I’ve commented on in past posts, the ideal functions of tenure are well-known. They allow academics to follow their own visions, researching long term and/or unpopular projects.

  Posner, though, has articulated one down side to tenure, and to the model of the tenured academic. Once tenured, an academic can solve problems no one else cares about. He or she can continue to embrace theories that events have left behind, or fail to even notice the emergence of difficult counter-examples.

  This could offer an alternative model for the adjunct scholar. Rather than following the private vision, follow the public one. Rather than moving independently of the market, ride its momentum. This might mean writing about brand new books, using new media, and so on. Rather than publishing in academic journals— so long carefully insulated from the economics of publishing— publish…elsewhere. This might mean corporate publishing venues, it might mean artistic non-profits, it might mean community papers, self-publishing, etc. And rather than following one’s own vision and assuming (rather arrogantly and Platonically) that it is right, allow your vision to emerge through interaction, dialogue, and synthesis.

  After all, the current adjunct situation was created through market forces; why not turn them, at least somewhat, to our advantage?

  Tags: adjunct employment, John Cassidy, New Yorker, Richard Posner, tenure

• The Tenure Track as Constraint (and minor updates)

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  09 Mar 2010 /  publishing, tenure, writing
  Let me start with a few minor updates:

  On the plus side, I’ve got some interesting interviews coming up. On the negative/absent side, I still haven’t heard back from many of the folks I’ve contacted about projects related to this blog. On the confusing side, I just joined Facebook, and so will be likely be delving in to this fascinating phenomenon a bit more soon, to see how it might be related to adjuncts and writing.

  Now, on to the core idea, which is a thought experiment grounded in reality. Consider the following: any goal is, among other things, a constraint. Setting tenure as your goal binds you to doing things that will achieve tenure. At most schools, this means focusing your writing on areas you were hired for. At even more schools, this means doing work which is recognized as scholarly.

  If that’s the sort of work you want to do, so far, so good. I have known many scholars who seem born to devote their lives to X (American literature, Latin poetry, etc.), and others who seem at great ease tracking down every last reference on a topic. I have long envied the first their certainty, and the second their sense of appropriate process. Completeness is a good thing.

  However, what if this is not the sort of work you want to do? What if you are exploratory? What if your values lead you outside of established forms and topics? What if you simply change? In those cases, the pursuit of tenure becomes a kind of constraint. Again, I’m not railing against constraint per se—Jane Austen would have my head—but simply put, there are times when it is better to pursue the new path than walk the one that no longer calls you. At that point, the tenure path becomes too much of a constraint…and being an adjunct who writes may emerge as a form of freedom.

  This is not a freedom born of abandon. I’m not suggesting that if you don’t pursue tenure, you will do slipshod work. I’m suggesting that releasing that goal may allow one to explore new media. It may allow one’s writing to appear immediately online and begin a multiplying influence that will come slowly, if ever, to those publishing in academic venues. Writing on new topics may allow one to be first, simply because the new media democratizing publishing allows one to share freely without the ponderous process of peer review.

  And it isn’t that tenured faculty can’t do these things. They can…but they are anchored into an existing system. They’ve been rewarded for working known fields. They are invested, even as they are protected.

  In some ways, writing without tenure allows the return of the intrinsic reward. One no longer has to seek conference presentations or journal acceptance. One can simply write.

  The flip side of reward is freedom. (Now, we still have to pay the bills…but that’s another question. Academic writing was never going to pay the bills anyway.)

  Tags: constraint, freedom, tenure

• Instead of Tenure…?

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  02 Mar 2010 /  adjuncts, tenure, writing
  In between these actual posts about writing and adjuncts, the subject is always simmering in the back of my mind. What is the relationship? What should the relationship be? How does one affect the other? What is the place of tenure in this equation?

  Some gloriously impractical ideas for posts bubble up, pop, and, thankfully (trust me on this one) evaporate, leaving only the faint scent of l’eau de brainstorm behind. However, some leave traces that might be useful; I’ll offer them up and we’ll see.

  The stated purpose of tenure is protection of academic freedom: professors who have proven their worth as scholars and/or teachers have shown earn job security. As a result, they are free to pursue their research wherever their training, conscience, and creativity may lead them. The image this ideal evokes is of the solitary thinker, standing up for what he or she thinks is right, speaking out and speaking up, despite the overt disapproval of the administration, whose hands are tied, and even of the surrounding community. This vision of tenure fits with the best elements of the ivory tower: protected and above it all, in order to see more clearly.

  Tenure can also be viewed as a form of cultural capital, a stamp of social approval that is given to some but not all. This imprimatur amplifies the individual’s voice, giving his or her positions greater weight, silencing some critics and making others at least listen to one’s positions. In this tenure enables your writing more efficacy. Finally, tenure gives stability. It requires a time investment from the faculty, and, once acquired, tends to anchor faculty in place. This is fraught with potential negatives, but it has the benefit of creating a fairly stable identity for the school.

  Adjuncts lack these (closely related) qualities. Not only are controversial opinions not protected, they are actively at risk. The most recent adjunct contract I signed indicated that the school in question “reserves the right to withdraw or cancel any course for any reason that it, at its sole discretion, deems appropriate.”

  So…instead of tenure, what options would protect academic freedom? What could be done to give adjuncts’ writing more weight and power? (We’ll leave aside the issue of a school’s stable identity for now. It interests me greatly, but isn’t really the subject of this blog.)

  One suggestion put forth for high school teachers is simply getting rid of tenure all together (and paying more money) This works to make the system less stable (in good ways—it can get rid of bad teachers), but to be frank, won’t help most adjuncts at all. It would ask schools to spontaneously pay them more…with no reason. We already work for cheap.

  Another option is writing under a pen name. The practice has a long history, and an honorable one. It’s already pretty common in academia, where folks like Thomas H. Benton write for publications as influential and mainstream as The Chronicle of Higher Education under pen names. Doing so takes care of protection and the academic freedom, and even adds the allure of being a secret rebel, but removes the power of the tenured pen.

  A third option is simply to ignore the administration/school. The people who might get mad about your writing are waaay too busy to keep tabs on you. Write whatever the heck you want. They won’t know unless someone brings it to their attention. And then you’re one screwed adjunct. This works for an unfortunately undefined time, which will be much longer if you’re working in non-controversial areas. It also works only for the academic freedom element of tenure, and does nothing to provide cultural capital.

  A fourth option requires political involvement/some negotiation. To be more specific, adjuncts can push for colleges to spell out the reasons they might be discharged (rather than making contracts at will), push for full year contracts, push for monetary compensation for all publications, and so on. Doing so may blow away the remnants of collegiality from the working relationships and expose it for the labor situation it is, but hey. It’s rarely comfortable to analyze things too close to home, but it is useful, and any gains won here would protect academic freedom for adjuncts far more than it is protected now.

  I find this avenue of thought useful, and I hope you do too; I’ll be returning to it in future posts, with more possibilities.

  Tags: adjuncts, alternatives, Greg Beatty, tenure, The Chronicle of Higher Education, writing

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