Tag Archives: teaching

Adjunct Faculty, Glendale Community College

The Strength of the Base of the Pillar

1 Comment

As adjunct faculty, our power inside and outside the classroom is like night and day. We are not full-time; our job is always at the whim of funding or enrollment. We don’t advise students or get the chance to participate in most staff meetings. How can someone with so little power have a positive impact on the workplace when they are, by most respects, the lowest member on the totem pole?

The answer is to use the position to your advantage. As an adjunct there is very little danger involved in sharing your ideas or asking questions. You have the advantage of avoiding workplace dynamics, the so-called “water cooler talks” or “he said she said”. As the lowest member on the totem pole, you have the advantage of being part of the team while also being outside of it. It is tough to make enemies as part time staff, so be brave. If you have an idea, go ahead and start talking it over with other adjuncts to see how it is received. If it goes well, suggest it to your advisor or department head. Making suggestions and taking an active part in trying to help those around you will help you shake any feelings of self-doubt you might have. Not all of your ideas might be used right away, but by sharing them, you are showing everyone that you do have ideas, and you do want to help. The other thing you can do is ask questions. You will find that most educators are more than willing to help you in your hour of need. Helping, after all, is part of what defines us as educators. Asking other adjuncts about their ideas or solutions is encouraging to them. When someone comes to you and asks for your help it shows that they have faith in you, that they trust your opinion. Trust and kindness often go hand in hand.

So don’t be afraid to share ideas and ask meaningful questions. By doing these two things a dialogue and community is created. Support others when you see them trying to reach out, and seek out support when you need to. By moving past your fear and realizing the impact you can have, even as an adjunct, you will encourage kindness and understanding in the workplace.

 
Adjunct Faculty, CTLE, Glendale Community College

Finding Inspiration from Isolation

1 Comment

This year marks the three-year anniversary of my teaching solely online as an Adjunct Faculty at GCC. At first glance teaching from the comforts of home might seem like a win-win situation, but I can assure you there are many setbacks, each of which deserving its own article. The most obvious and problematic setback is that of isolation. I don’t get to see my students face-to-face unless it is via a rare Skype conference. I don’t get to have my treasured lunch outings with Gary or Andy. I don’t even get to participate in Assessment Day or Adjunct Appreciation. I am, by most respects, a ghost in a machine that sometimes sends out e-mails and makes videos to remind the world I exist.

So where do I find inspiration in such a situation? Fortunately, even behind a keyboard and monitor, there are those who have managed to help keep me improving my courses and teaching, and grading all those essays.

Although not a part of GCC, my wife’s support is essential to my improvement. She is a workaholic, a zealot for her career and passions, and a stickler for punctuality. Her work ethic and drive have, over the course of our fifteen years together, rubbed off. I do my best to seize what opportunities come my way now, one example being that I volunteer as an emergency substitute teacher at my community’s local school. When my schedule permits, I get to work with and teach children ranging from kindergarten all the way to High School seniors; it is a blessing, and something I would not have pursued if not for my wife’s example.

Despite being a solid twenty-hour drive away from campus, I still treasure my conversations with the faculty at GCC. This includes both full-time faculty and fellow adjuncts like myself. Alisa Cooper has been my bedrock ever since I left the desert valley. Her drive and curiosity about new and exciting technologies has prompted me to reform how I approach online learning, all for the better. During her time as my direct supervisor she pointed me in the direction of opportunities and helped me correct and learn from my mistakes. Thanks to her I am now a video fiend. I’ve started my own youtube series of power lectures, and made myself less of a digital phantom to my students by posting videos and voice overs regularly. This continued with Beth Eyres who took over for Alisa after “Dr. Coop” (#cooperize) moved to the CTLE. Beth has helped me feel like I am still connected to the English faculty and community at GCC. She often informs me about events that I can take part in from a distance, like this blog. Most importantly she has made me feel like a contributor. I have worked as adjunct for four colleges in my ten years as an educator and she was one of the first supervisors to make me feel like my opinion mattered. Helping to create and develop the online English 101 shell has been one of the best experiences of my career, and I have Beth and her faith in me to thank for that.

Inspiration, even in isolation, is not hard to find when you stay in contact with the right people. My family at home and my family at GCC continue to be the right people to help me improve and better myself every day.

 
CTLE, professional development, Write6x6

Professional Development and Reflection

     I have always been a reflective learner and thinker.  When I began teaching, I had a long drive to and from work, and I used that 45 minutes to think on the day and its lessons–my lessons–and how students had learned or become engaged.  So when reflecting became a mandatory part of our teacher portfolio each year, I thought No problem.  This is amazing.  And did I ever reflect.  I liked knowing that the person who evaluated me was getting to see such a valuable piece of teaching that was beyond the reach of a classroom observation.  And I’ll just say right now, this is one reason why [NERD ALERT] I like writing my IDP.  I want my colleagues and evaluators to know more about my teaching.  Reflection is a critical part of teaching that takes place all behind the scenes.
   
     And this takes me to professional development.  I’ve always liked professional development, including the time we played with marbles or had to put on skits and even the time I had one of my most embarrassing moments with all the English teachers in the district present.  Nope, not getting that one out of me.  But the key to professional development, for me anyway, is having time to process all the learning, to really anchor it in with my current knowledge and understanding.  I’m sorry to say I haven’t always had that time.  I’m lucky to have been able to work in two districts that so value professional development and really lucky that the second one allows me more time to do the reflecting.
   
     So when I attended Mary and Jennifer’s LearnShop on Friday–Developmental Education: Teaching Learning Strategies and Critical Thinking–I was happy to get time to think and reflect during the time there, on the drive home, and over the course of the weekend.  I already applied what I learned to one of my courses.  As my friend Alisa Cooper said, “Learning is my passion…[and]…I want to learn new things.”  I will continue to take advantage of as much professional development as I can and, if able, share it with people who want to hear about it.

 
CTLE, Write6x6

The Curse of Week Four

     What is it about week four?  I arrived at work bright and early on Monday, eagerly anticipating the day.  But it just felt odd.  Stressful?  Already?  It’s only Monday, I thought, determined to figure out why this week had me on edge.

     There were a few pieces of old business hanging over from the previous week: the Write6x6 blog post (ahem), some work coming in from students, some planning I had not finished. And there were thoughts of what I had to do coming up, one item not until April that I was worried about. Then there’s that one troublesome student who seems determined not to learn from me all while I try desperately to learn from her in hopes I can actually find a sneaky way to teach her.  Maybe all of this unease is the settling in of the semester for all of us, students included. Yep, the semester really did start. Yep, weekends are now mostly about grading or doing homework.  Maybe now is the time to really work on balance. Yes, today I’ll work on balance and get rid of some of this unease.

     This plan might have panned out at some point had Wednesday, the day some refer to as hump day, allowed me to have the time to think about balance. Instead my wife texted me to say we were overdrawn in the checking account (we just got paid last week). “What happened?” I texted. “We’re supposed to be rich.”

     “I don’t know.  I lost track.  Bills.  Students loans.  I bought some clothes.”

     Dollar signs appeared before my eyes. I imagined trucks pulling up in front of the house, delivering racks of clothes. How much could someone spend on new outfits?

     This bump in the hump was just a bit of a slow down midweek, but it was not awful, just perplexing.


     Shortly after arriving home, later than usual, I greeted the animals with sweet talk and lots of pets. It was just a few moments later that I realized our cute and sweet Lila was having another bout of diarrhea. It wouldn’t be so bad if she weren’t long haired and if she didn’t curl her tail under herself in the catbox. I grabbed for some paper towels and then grabbed her tail–it’s never a good idea to grab a cat’s tail. She
tried to run, and she hissed. Her hind claws caught my toes which were only protected by socks, one of which has a hole in the toe I noticed.

     This was a job that needed more than just a dampened half paper towel. I grabbed and wetted a wash cloth and went in again. After much hiding under tables, running, hissing, and clawing–both of us–I got her to a spot where I could really hold down her tail and wash it, and surprisingly she let me do it. I think she was just tired. She’s having a week four, too.

     I’m not sure I’m the only one having a week four, but it is certainly my challenge to work out the rough spots this week. I need to find a way to sand down the edges. There are two things that sometimes work for me:

1.  Read a book that has a little depth.  Right now I’m reading When the Heart Waits: Spiritual Direction for Life’s Sacred Questions by Sue Monk Kidd. It feels a little heavy for what may just be a strange week, but books like this challenge me to wonder about the big picture and, in doing so, I can generally put into perspective the little things.

2.  Do a brain dump and prioritize.  There’s a formula I use for this. (I’ve had students do this at high stress times of the semester, too. Takes about ten minutes in class, maybe a few more if you talk about it.)   Here are the steps.  Math ahead.
   a.  List everything you can think of that you have to do that you can’t stop thinking about.  (Here’s where I’d make my list and actually put down that thing I have to do in April.)
   b.  Give everything a number from 1-4 based on when it has to be done (1=in the next day, 2= in a few days, 3=within two weeks, 4=long way off).  Rule?  You may not give everything a 1.  Rule?  Don’t put down eating or sleeping.
   c.  Give everything another number from 1-4 based on how serious the consequences are if you don’t do it (1=jobs lost, people die, you get the idea; 2=serious, but not life altering; 3=even less serious; 4=who cares?).
   d.  Multiply those two numbers together to give all items a new and final number.
   e.  Rewrite the items from 1-? and then cut the list in half.
   f.  Work on the top half.  Forget about the bottom half for now.

     This might seem obvious to everyone else, but I find it really helps me to focus, and maybe that is the key to conquering the curse of week four–to focus on what really matters and let the little things go.
   

 
CTLE, Write6x6

Making a difference. Difference. Different.

Making a difference.
Difference.
Different.

When I think of all the people I encounter, I realize they all have made some difference in my life:

  • My colleagues challenge me to rethink my practice. They do so in a lot of ways but one way is simply by sharing their own practices. They share difference.
  • My spouse shares an insight from her readings, and I learn something new and make a slight adjustment to my thoughts about life and how we live it.
  • My friends share themselves and time with me, further encouraging me to be present and not bury myself in work.
     If I turn this around and think about the difference I make as a teacher, simply due to the volume of students I have had pass through my classroom, I realize the potential for making a difference is dramatic.  If my math is right, I’ve taught about 4,000 students.  Now that’s no Taylor-Swift-Twitter-numbers, but I’ve also spent 45-180 hours with each of these people. And if I taught them more than

one semester or year or coached them, add even more hours to that.  That is a lot of time being present with someone.  It’s hard not to make some kind of difference in all that time.

In the smallest way possible, I hope to make a difference in teaching my students how to write. But what they take from these efforts of mine will vary.  A couple weeks ago, I ran into a student from last semester who thanked me profusely for helping her during that class.  She assured me that she felt really good in her current class because of all that I asked her to work on.  I was surprised when her eyes welled up with tears, and I thought, Wow, she took way more from my class than I could ever plan for.  

In a more personal way, I try to recommend my students for items they may find personally interesting.  I’ve sent two returning students over to Debbie to discuss the honors program, and both of them are now taking honors courses.  I like to recommend scholarships to students and even assist them with their applications if needed.  I’ve written countless letters of recommendation, most recently for a student who wants to participate in a Study Abroad.  Even when students are not successful, I believe what I have written about them has the potential to make a difference in how they perceive themselves.

I think I make the most difference in people’s lives in my role as a teacher, but all of this “difference” spins out of relationships.  Relationships matter, and they give us a chance to become more reflective and to grow in knowledge and experience.

 

 
Uncategorized

In Between

     I heard one time that people go through one major change every ten years.  The idea is proving true for me.  The most recent change I experienced (and am experiencing) was leaving a job I had for 23 years to come to GCC. To say that I was rooted in that location, tied to the people, traditions, and processes would be an understatement.  I started and grew my career there, and I involved myself in as many parts of campus and district life as I could, from sponsoring clubs and coaching sports to helping teachers experiencing discipline and being an officer in the teachers’ association.  To come to GCC meant leaving the familiar and comfortable for something different, something new.

     Being in that state of unfamiliarity is a strange place to be.  It sparked reflection about the big questions in life.  It jostled my confidence a time or two.  Sometimes those things happen and cause a change.  In this case, the change provoked what I can only call growth.
     By far the biggest assistance I’ve had in this change has been through my colleagues, the opportunities I’ve experienced, and our students.  My colleagues have accepted me with the friendliness of a thousand Quokkas.

I’ve attended conferences that have allowed me to stretch my classroom practices. Finally, teaching is teaching, and while students are students, the ones at GCC are particularly friendly, eager to meet their goals, and, though a little concerned, generally optimistic about their futures.  I’m optimistic, too.

Jin Xiang

 
Write6x6

The Pressure is on for English Teachers

Leave a comment

freshmancompI teach English at GCC. Technically I teach Freshman Composition, but we say English when asked what we teach. Composition is writing. This is a very interesting considering I majored in English Literature. You know: Beowulf, Shakespeare, Austen, Joyce and Lawrence. I was never taught to write beyond ENG101 and ENG102 in undergrad, but I was expected to do it in every literature class I took. I eventually graduated with a degree in English Literature. So what kind of job does one get with a degree in English Literature? Education or teaching is the number one option. So here I am, teaching English at GCC.

What you can garner from that short story is that most college students get very few opportunities to learn how to write, even when you are studying to be an English teacher. I eventually earned a masters degree in education where I learned to teach writing, but composition classes prior to that were minimal. That is why ENG101 and ENG102 for our students is so crucial. For most it will be their only opportunity to learn to write for their college careers and life in general. Those important skills they learn in Freshman Composition include:

  • Written and other communication skills
  • Understanding complex ideas and theories
  • Research

So the pressure is on for English teachers – ENG101 and ENG102 teachers. These are important skills that go beyond just writing an essay. We’re trying to teach students to think critically, read critically, research critically, and then write. That’s what makes Freshman Composition challenging for students. For the most part, students know how to write or they should considering they just spend four years in high school learning how to do it. But college writing is different. There’s more at stake considering this may be students only chance to learn these skills. Yet many students don’t see the importance of these two courses. They take it for granted.
As I sit here reflecting and writing, I’m all that more thankful for the English teachers I had at Phoenix College and Yavapai College. Because with out that foundation those instructors instilled in me, I really don’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing today. And I don’t just mean teaching English. I mean blogging and writing all over the internet in social media sites, writing emails to my colleagues, and writing in my profession. I’m thankful I have the skills, written and other communication skills, critical thinking skills, and research skills, to do my job and do it well.

 
Uncategorized

In Cat Puke and Making a Difference

Leave a comment

How do I make a difference?

That’s a difficult question on a difficult day.
My day began this morning, early, when I stuck my elbow in cat throw up. Before I realized what I had done, I managed to rub the tender pink puke all over my black pants.

I changed pants and reported to my 8:30 a.m. ENG 091 class where I had to face my students with professionalism and aplomb. I had to keep in mind the new best practices I was learning for active engagement through the recent MCLI LearnShop in Scottsdale when all I wanted to do was go back to bed. Besides the cat puke, I have custody issues for my youngest son weighing on my mind. I am Out of Sorts. I do not want to be In Charge today.

I don’t know how I make a difference. I’ve been teaching at the college level for over twenty years now, and I still can’t answer that question. But here’s what I do know: that I *do* make a difference. It’s just really difficult to articulate how because my job is to arm my students with the necessary writing skills they need as they go out into the world. Once they’re out there, I only know what’s going on when they check back in, and that only happens every so often.

Still, I say this: teaching is an act of faith. To me, it’s as much an act of faith as taking Communion on Sunday or observing Lent. It’s as much an act of faith as raising one’s child to be the best person he can be and hoping it’ll work out when he or she is twenty-two and living in another city.

How I make a difference, I think, is by believing this, by believing that I make a difference, however it is that I do it. *What* I do doesn’t make nearly the difference that my mindset and belief allows me to make. That’s where the power is, and it’s where and how I make my decisions–through my utter belief in that which I cannot articulate. Professional development? Yes, please. A conference that takes me away from my family? Yes, please. An MCLI workshop that forces me to drive an hour in rush-hour traffic in a direction I never go in? Yes, please. I accept these opportunities for professional growth because even though I don’t know specifically how I make a difference, I know, deep down, that I do. And that’s what keeps me moving forward semester after semester, year after year, even on the rare days that begin with inadvertent submersion of my elbow into a pile of waiting cat puke.

 
Uncategorized

Walk 1-1

Leave a comment

What an exciting project!  I’m happy to be part of this.

This is my teaching philosophy:

“If students can’t learn the way we teach, then we must teach the way they learn.” 
adapted from Ignacio Estrada
Lori Walk
Education and Reading Faculty
5-3751
HT2-113

 

 
Uncategorized

Week of Accountability ’15 Teaching Tip: What just happened?

     At the beginning of most class periods, I had out a small sheet of scrap paper to every student.  It’s about 1/4 of an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper.  At the beginning of the semester they always ask, “What’s this for?”  As we get farther on, they stop asking, they might groan, or if I do not give them one that day, they may ask for one!  In the last few minutes of class, I always ask students to write something for me:

1.  something they learned
2.  something that is not clear
3.  a question
4.  the topic they are writing on
5.  a working thesis
6.  the title of a good source they found
7.  a short rhetorical analysis
    This could be anything, and it can serve several purposes: to keep them engaged for what’s coming up, as formative assessment, as communication between us (often I respond and pass it back the next class period). Students who do not like to raise a hand in class feel heard and get questions answered.  It’s a quick way for me to see what they get, the direction in which they are going, and to know which students may need extra visiting during the next class.