Negotiating the Paradox: Adjuncts & Writing

• Adjunct Limbo: A Case Study

  2 Comments
  19 Apr 2010 /  adjuncts, grading
  Last week I sketched out the issues surrounding adjuncts and grading in general. This week these issues were brought home in a specific experience, one that is particular to the adjunct’s situation (and exacerbated by living in the information age).

  The situation? A student had a problem with a paper. To be specific, she submitted a paper that was an exact copy of one of her earlier papers. I’ve had this happen before in instances where I judged it to be completely innocent. In these cases, the erroneous submission is followed within a short time by a hasty (and sometimes teary) phone message, email, text, and /or office visit with the real paper attached, clutched, or promised. I’ve also had students submit the same paper twice in what seemed to be a calculated cynicism (as in, they thought I wouldn’t notice and said so when asked).

   

  The context? I teach for more than one school, and right now I teach for more than one school online. That’s crucial here, because when this student contacted me in a panic, she did so via email. That email was her personal email, not a school email. She had chosen an email address that didn’t include her last name, and her first name was common. When she emailed me her plea regarding the paper I “claimed” had been submitted twice, she didn’t sign her name. Finally, her discussion of her paper was so general that I couldn’t tell if she was a graduate student or a freshman.

   

  The result? I found myself paralyzed, adrift in the Sargasso Sea of the responsible adjunct. One school I teach for has very specific policies favoring the student. (They get to submit the papers over, without any penalty.) Another school allows me to make a policy. I’d done so, and posted it in the classroom. A third school held the student responsible. One of the schools I teach for is very strict about which details can be sent to non-institutional emails. Another is pretty lax about these details, accenting flexibility in instructor response mode.

   

  I found myself unable to respond. My mind raced in a little circle, trying to guess which female student this was, from which school. I simply couldn’t. My heart surged into the details of the narrative, trying to decide what I thought was the right thing to do in this situation…and then I kept realizing I may not be allowed to do the right thing.

   

  I could email her and ask what school she’s from, but that leaves the situation hanging (and, though it may be honest, may make a panicked student even more anxious). Do I delay a response until she writes again with her name (breaking policy on required response times at some schools?)? Post notes in all classes asking all Lindas/Susans/Janes to sign their emails using their last names? (I’d already done the general note, asking all students to sign notes, so that wasn’t enough.)

   

  Any teacher at any school might get an unidentified and unidentifiable message from a student, and be unable to track it even by class. I couldn’t even track it by institution or policy, and so every attempt to do the right thing left me burning more time I didn’t have. I couldn’t judge freely, because I was contractually constrained. I couldn’t even conform, because I couldn’t figure out what institution’s policies to conform to. (And I cannot teach for only one school and make enough money, so…)

   

  Dante’s limbo included virtuous pagans who could never enter heaven. I guess this is my version of Adjunct Limbo: the virtuous instructor who can never enter tenure. My torments aren’t really tortures, but they grind on and on and on…

   

   

   

   

  Tags: adjuncts, grading, limbo, policies, writing

• 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

• Why Adjuncts Don’t Write

  4 Comments
  25 Aug 2009 /  adjuncts, publishing
  As we’ve seen in previous posts, many adjuncts write. They write well, prolifically, and usefully; they win awards for their writing. Some publish scholarship in their field; some blog or otherwise engage new media in ways that provide valuable service to their disciplines.

  Many adjuncts, though, do not write for publication. Why is that? There are a variety of possible reasons.

  1) Adjuncts are bad at what they do.

  Some commentators suggest that the conditions under which adjuncts labor drive the best of them out. The best leave, it is suggested, for greener pastures, leaving only the tired and the inept toiling as adjuncts. This is possible, but I’d obviously like to think this isn’t the case.

  2) Adjuncts are too busy and tired.

  This is one of the most obvious reasons adjuncts don’t write (at much as they like, as much as they thought they would, etc.). I think we can take it as a given that some adjuncts are exhausted—and if you’re driving from campus to campus to campus, you are usually not writing during those hours.

  3) Adjuncts care about other things.

  One of the first people I contacted about this blog falls into this category. She trained me as an online teacher, and has made a long and rich career out of being an adjunct teacher. When I contacted her about her writing, she simply said that she didn’t write—that she put her energy into other things. This includes being in a band, running a business, driving race cars, and so on. I can’t say exactly what is lost through her choice to not pursue traditional scholarship—but I can testify that her real world experience is highly useful and applicable in the classroom.

  4) Adjuncts have other demands on their time.

  Some of the exhausted adjuncts are organizing and mobilizing, making their profession a better place through direct action. They are foregoing their own writing to improve workplace conditions.

  5) Adjuncts care about teaching more than writing.

  This is actually one of the saddest truths about many adjuncts I’ve met. Many are not really a good fit for traditional scholarship. Oh, they’re smart enough, no doubt—but their focus is on their students. They live for that moment when classroom discussion catches fire and the enthusiasm spreads through the room. In my field (English), they often actually prefer the lower level courses because there they can focus on the texts and helping students understand them, rather than, say, the theoretical emphasis of graduate coursework. These faculty should be teaching—ideally at a liberal arts college, where teaching is valued—and be cherished for that focus.

  6) Adjuncts have bought into an entrepreneurial mindset.

  An interesting article in Academe makes the case for this position. There John Hess argues that some adjuncts have shifted to a kind of “what’s in it for me” approach to how they spend their time. These adjuncts are turning away from traditional scholarship because they estimate of the return on scholarly writing is too meager. Hess spends some time discussing this approach, so I’ll let you read it for yourself, but it boils down to rationalizing one’s labor: seeking the greatest return for the least effort.

  This seems at once tragic and completely logical. The classic image of a teacher is one who is devoted beyond the limits of selfish calculation to his or her student, giving more than is needed, asked, or even understood in the short term. And that is if not gone at least threatened and diminished by the adjunct labor situation. Becoming a rational laborer seems sensible in the current work world.

  Needless to say, there are paradoxes and contradictions in this list. Not only do I not deny them, I embrace them: they are the essence of adjunct teaching. People who care more about teaching than writing may be forced to short their teaching to survive.

  Tags: adjuncts, Greg Beatty, John Hess, writing

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