the glory and the challenges

What do you like most about your job?

people I work with
we all get along- that speaks a lot
goo leadership
flexibility
I get to teach a freshman comp and lit class on Writing about Travel
the development of the Writing Center

experimental
nature of our faculty to innovate
look at possibilities, try them, analyze them, decide how to improve
exciting scholarship (though not necessarily in official presentations)
Does that mean my list of presentations was too long? I was trying to show that I can do the work… Not sure I succeeded in that.

division allows us to take chances
offers faith for innovation
offers support for when we fail, as we will if we are innovating

How would you define the Ideal candidate or success in this job?

someone who is innovative
works well with others
is easy to work with
hard worker
not afraid of work
willing to take on service
community issue
flexiblity

I went through my blog and pulled out the questions this college asked in their last round of interviews. I wrote answers to them so that I would be prepared.

Those are not, of course, the questions I got on the test. (Doesn’t it feel that way sometimes? Perhaps it will make me more supportive of my students.)

Their questions were:

Describe the role of an English department in a community college.

What experience do you have with
writing centers,
developmental writing,
online education,
and dual credit classes?

How have you incorporated technology into your classroom? How has that worked? not worked?

Give an example of a writing assignment that you created and tell why you created it.

How do issues of diversity shape your classroom planning?

How do you give students ongoing feedback?

What do you do if you have a student who is falling behind?

What do you take to an English department that is unique? (Those were there words, “take to” as opposed to “bring to.” Interesting.)

$5000 approach to teaching writing

The Power of Narration

I just received my copy of Off-track Profs about adjuncts in higher education yesterday.

I’m apparently a little behind in my reading because I saw Maurice Black and Erin O’Connor’s review up on Minding the Campus. It’s called “The Ominous Rise of The Adjuncts.”

Just a hint to pique your interest:

When Cross and Goldenberg visited the ten elite public and private schools around which their study is based, they encountered deans, provosts, and presidents who were not aware of the extent or nature of non-tenure-track teaching on their campus. They encountered department chairs and unit-level staff who were aware of their own local, ad hoc patterns of appointing non-tenure-track faculty, but were ignorant of the broader context or aggregate impact of those decisions. They even found that the language used to describe non-tenure-track personnel—whose titles and job descriptions vary from position to position, department to department, and school to school—conspired, on campus after campus, to blur important distinctions among instructors, researchers, post-docs, graduate students, assistant professors, visiting professors, and even staff. In other words, they found that across the board, non-tenure-track faculty are retained “without meaningful administrative oversight.”

What created the problem? The sources are many and varied. Ill-conceived budgets and measures aimed at cost effectiveness play a predictable role, as do the expense and inflexibility of tenure-track positions.

I’m going to get reading on that.

“Writing is not really a separate activity, it’s part of a broader process of thinking, reading, structuring, analysing [sic].”

DonStefano at a Chronicle forum.

At one CC, the position of English instructor had gone through multiple interviews, including the final interviews with the administration, and then they decided not to fill the position.

I find that particularly odd in light of the president’s comments that he had plenty of money. But then again, that may have been a hint of what was to come, if he was being defensive about the situation.

Oh well. I shall not be paranoid and think they closed the position because I wasn’t “good enough.”

Instead I will blame it on the economy and the vagaries of hiring practices everywhere.

One of the things that makes teaching easier and more interesting these days is the preponderance of information on the net.

When I began to teach Early British Literature, with no sample syllabus and few remaining notes from most of my own courses (except the Old English classes), I surfed the net looking for the beached treasures that I could take advantage of. I found many.

In no particular order:

Intro to Neoclassical Literature

Dryden introduction

Questions on Everyman. Dr. Wheeler has many good ideas and I have mined these assiduously. They often come out in another form in my class, but they are very useful.

Paradise Lost essay ?s sources
2. Cliff Notes
3, 5 ParadiseLost.org
7-15 Universal Teacher
I go find a bunch of essay questions and then I mix them up so that I don’t have the same topics I am reading every semester. These are some of the sources for the essay questions on Paradise Lost.

My lecture on Paradise Lost was assembled mostly from web sources. The ones I used are:
Johnstoi’s English 200
ParadiseLost.org
Dr. Drake’s work on Toliver’s structural analysis of the poem
Universal Teacher’s structural analysis.

Gulliver’s Travels
St. John’s discussion questions
Russell McNeil’s draft of a lecture on Laputa
Encarta’s introduction to satire, which I really stressed the first few years and now just gloss over
history of the novel, which I do not use now, but did help me organize my own thoughts on this topic
Read, Write, Think’s historical references in book I

I have plenty to offer my classes that are novel and unique. But part of the reason I am able to have that is I don’t try to do everything myself. Sometimes there is a better mousetrap. Sometimes we are just trying to reinvent the wheel.

Articles on literature are collected here, including one that looks like the original to my notes on “What Makes Literature Classic?” and a list of great first lines of books.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.”

Mitchell Smith, Due North: “She stood on the fox until it died.”
…
From a Hemingway short story, “In Another Country”: “In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore.”
…
From Charlotte’s Web: “‘Where’s Papa going with that ax?’ said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.”
…
Quest for a Maid by Frances Mary Hendry: “When I was seven, I hid under a table and watched my sister kill a king.”
…
Orwell, “England Your England”: “As I write, highly civilized human beings are flying overhead, trying to kill me.”

This leaves out my favorite. From a popular science fiction novel by Miller and Lee, “The man who was not Terrence O’Grady came quietly.”

I have an interview for a third full-time position for which I applied this year. It appears that the other two interviews, while revealing in many ways, did not result in my being hired by the schools in question. I am disappointed, of course, since I did want both of those positions.

This interview is for a position just announced two weeks ago. Did the school grow enough to need another full-time position? Did someone who accepted a job decide not to take it? Did a full-timer step down unexpectedly? I do not know.

I do know the campus is small but beautiful. In their February job ad they said they wanted people who were not “traditionally community college.” I am unsure what that means, but it was an interesting point. I also know that the school has about the same level of students as CC1. I also know that I interviewed with them last year and never made it to the second interview.

I am hoping that this year, I stand out as a wonderful addition to the faculty since I have great presentations (I do) and my publications are picking up (they are).

I hope that it is true that third time (or in this case third interview set) is the charm.