November 2008

Learning is one of the greatest joys in my life and I want to pass that love of learning on to my students.

Great teachers have a passion for teaching and for their subject matter. They teach communication through writing and speaking and prepare their students for critical thinking and research.  Great teachers make the information available to the students in a way the students can understand.  The great teachers also concentrate on providing intense and focused learning environments as well as the encouragement for students to learn which equip the students to function well throughout their lives, both personally and professionally. 

Learning is a responsibility, a privilege, and a great deal of fun.  I want my students to realize that and have experienced it in my classroom. 

Reading literature:

As an avid reader, I have enjoyed taking literature courses. My second field of study in my doctoral program was Old English language and literature.  In addition, my master’s focused on literature primarily in early British and American literature for a total of thirty-six graduate hours in literature.  I have relished the opportunities I have had to teach literature classes, both sophomore British literature through the eighteenth century and freshman writing about literature.

            In teaching a literature course, I believe that the more the students enjoy the readings in class, the more likely they are to finish the assigned texts and continue reading similar works after they finish the course.  Examining the choices available, I select works I am enthusiastic about, since enthusiasm is contagious.  Beowulf is a favorite of mine and the students benefit from studying the work with someone who enjoys it.  I have had students, even those who have studied the work before, tell me that they did not realize Beowulf was so fascinating.  I do not think the text changed, but the way they looked at it clearly did.

Providing background information:

I also make sure the students have the background they need to understand a particular work, including historical, linguistic, and cultural information.  For example, when teaching “The Yellow Wallpaper,” I introduce the students to the history of psychiatric care and to the changing expectations of women, specifically delineating the idea of the “weaker sex” and how that plays out in illness, relationships, and social life. Additional readings include Nellie Bly’s biography and her exposé of asylums, Ten Days in a Mad-House, while those who wish to learn more about historical responses to insanity might read Torrey and Miller’s The Invisible Plague or for a quicker overview examine posts on the topic at www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/blogger.html.  I also try to give the students related literary readings, so that they can see the work as a part of a larger canon and not as a work in isolation. When teaching Gilman’s short story, the class also reads “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin and the play “Trifles” by Susan Glaspell.  This gives the students the opportunity to compare the role of illness, both mental and physical, and the role of women in different stories written during similar time periods.  This enrichment approach to literature encourages the students to develop their own deeper insights about the works and the themes and ideas presented in them.

Modeling how to read literature:

Modeling how to read literature is a practice essential to my courses.  I usually begin to read the assignment with the students, since this introduces them to the work in a non-threatening way.  When a concept is new to the course, I often have the class brainstorm together; when teaching Shakespeare, the class collaborates on possible definitions for tragedy and comedy.   When I am teaching poetry and want them to practice intense reading, I allow them to choose a poem not on my assigned list and, as a class, we read through it on consecutive days, making notes and identifying our changing understanding of the work.  They expect me as the expert to know everything about a poem with the first reading and this experiment lets me show them how even someone well versed in reading poetry can learn from subsequent readings.

            If the literary work is challenging, I provide help with vocabulary lists and questions to focus on particular issues as needed.  Several of my students have said that these act as a guide for them when they are reading so they know that they understand the text when they are able to begin to answer the questions. A sample question for Gulliver’s Travels is:

Gulliver says,  “Although there were few greater lovers of mankind, at that time, than myself, yet I confess I never saw any sensitive being so detestable on all accounts; and the more I came near them the more hateful they grew, while I stayed in that country” (Bk. 4, Ch. 2).  Gulliver’s revulsion forms the basis for his intense hatred of mankind (misanthropy).  Why and to what extent is it normal for Gulliver to react to the Yahoos this way and how is his reaction problematic?

Questions like these allow the students to explore the text and its implications rather than just rush through a reading to say it is finished and perhaps miss the reading’s most important lessons.  If a student can read well, most things become accessible.

Goals for literature:

In my classes I also discuss the applications of literary analysis to other areas of their lives.  A character analysis can be very similar to a personnel review, for example.  It can also be useful when trying to sort out personality conflicts among friends.  In addition I try to show that other people, besides English teachers, have read the works and expect that they will have too.  To do this, I bring in comic strips or cartoons that refer to the works we are reading.  I also reference editorial letters in newspapers or magazine articles on other topics that refer to literature. It is a light-hearted way to make a serious point.  I hope that they are encouraged to keep reading long after the assignments are completed.

If not, this UPenn site may have what you need. It has regularly updated CFPs and essay solicitations.

Both of my essay proposals for publication which have been accepted came from there. I hope to also be writing an encyclopedia article, which was okayed but not formally accepted, from that list as well.

In addition, I found a national conference which I have good credentials and papers for which I had never heard of and I applied there.

Part of what makes an instructor marketable is the presenting and publishing. (If you aren’t sure of that, check out my response to an interview discussion. Or look at this conversation on publishing and job offers.)

I am halfway through grading the research paper rewrites.
None of the rewrite grades are worse than the originals; in fact, they are all improved.
I have two publications accepted.
I have been accepted at four conferences (one national and three regional).
The semester has only one more week before finals and my students writing is much improved.
I am going to be teaching a new course next semester and another next fall.
There are openings for rhetoric and composition instructors at the schools in my area.
I have figured out where to check for CFPs.
I get to read my own poetry at a conference.
I got to tell my assistant dean about one of the publications and the reading of my poetry.
I have two adjunct jobs and another if I want it.
While I am not the nicest dressed instructor on campus, I do look good.
I have enjoyed getting to know another group of students in a different environment.

Full-time college teaching has become an undervalued resource in the United States.

Cost to Students
A new study shows that first year students are more likely to drop out if they are taught by adjuncts.

That is not just a cost to the students; it is also a cost to the colleges in terms of retention, which is a rate that they are judged on. Apparently, though, it is not sufficiently an issue to begin to hire more full-timers.

Those at community colleges who don’t drop out are less likely to transfer to a four-year school.

Since this is not something that community colleges typically track, it doesn’t matter to their bottom line. If they did track it, or someone did, it would matter more.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Ed, students were much more likely to drop out if the high stakes courses (like freshman English, in which an A is required for nursing) were taught by adjuncts.

If we want an educated populace, then it seems that we ought to hire full-time teachers who are teachers first to educate and care for the students in the gatekeeper courses.

The Journal of Higher Education looked specifically at community colleges and found that those with high percentages of adjuncts had lower percentages of students completing school.

Possible future cost to colleges:

Again, since they don’t track this, it is not an issue for community colleges. If USA Today or US News & World Report published this information, disseminating it to the public, then it would become an issue.

Regression analysis indicates that graduation rates for public community colleges in the United States are adversely affected when institutions rely heavily upon part-time faculty instruction. Negative effects may be partially offset if the use of part-time faculty increases the net faculty resource available per student. However, the evidence suggests that this offset is insufficient to reverse negative effects upon graduation rates.

I wonder if the community colleges have someone who keeps up with this kind of information. It seems like if this became more known, people would stop going to community colleges until they hired more full-time faculty. Of course, for those to whom price is the biggest issue, this is not true.

Over the past three decades, one of the most significant changes in the delivery of postsecondary education involves the dramatic increase in the use of contingent or part-time faculty. The pattern is particularly pronounced at community colleges, where part-time faculty provide virtually half of all instruction.

I hate to break it to him, but part-time faculty at my college provide three-quarters of the… Okay, maybe not. Three-quarters of the faculty are adjuncts, but until two years ago, adjuncts were only allowed to teach five courses a year- which is half of what a full-timer can teach. However, two years ago, this was increased to three courses a semester. Now part-timers can teach nine a year while full-timers teach ten a year. Most part-timers teach seven a year. So with 3/4s of the faculty being part-timers and the ration of 7:10… Adjuncts teach 52% of the classes at CC1.

And the number of adjuncts has increased while the percentage of full-time faculty has dropped. In 1970 78% of faculty was full-time. In 2005, the percentage dropped to 52. That’s a 26% drop in 35 years. By the time I retire, if the trend keeps going, only 35% of the faculty will be full-time.

Why is this happening?

Why is full-time teaching decreasing while part-time is increasing?

The bottom line, of course, is cost. If my CC hired me full-time, I would be making $57K a year and they would be having to pay basically $114K for the privilege (with taxes and health care). Part-time, they pay me and another like me $22K. And they don’t have to pay health care for me. So their cost for a “full-time equivalent” is $33K. They can hire six adjuncts who teach more than three times as many classes, for the price of hiring me full-time.

But the cost wouldn’t matter if the public were not going to schools with high levels of adjuncts or if accrediting institutions considered the percentage of adjuncts.

Transparency coming?

New America reports that the government is considering requiring transparency in number of adjuncts at a college. The colleges, of course, are resisting this. It’s not that they don’t know how many they hire. They do. They just don’t want the general public to know.

As of now, accrediting institutions rarely require any sort of definition of part-time faculty, leaving that to the institution, and do not require that schools follow any rules about hiring, evaluating, or maintaining part-time faculty. It’s not an issue to the accrediting agencies, so it isn’t to the schools.

I found a fifty-word teaching philosophy at So You Want to Teach?, and since I am working on my cv and philosophy and so forth, I decided I would try it. Here’s my first (and maybe last) attempt at describing my practical approach to teaching:

Learning is fun and reading and writing are essential skills. Because practice increases competence, students practice a lot. They read and analyze; they write and revise their work. Assignments have clear real-world applications and I model how to read or write the assignments. In addition, questions or prewriting helps guide them through the topic before they begin writing.

Poetry introduction.

A lot of our students have never read poetry or don’t realize they have read it.
Things to talk about:
What is poetry?
Where is poetry?
Who writes poetry?
History of poetry.
How do they write poetry?
How can you write poetry?
How to read poetry aloud.

What is poetry?
words
create a feeling
set a scene
may tell a story- used to tell a story, now more often a photograph/scene
may give a moral
may rhyme
a way of expressing something (thought/emotion)
“should be written at least as well as prose”

Ezra Pound
pay attention to the way it looks on the page

“use no superfluous word, no adjective, which does not reveal something”E. Pound

if you had to pay $1 for each word in your poem, how many would you have to keep?

Poetry is an experiment. The poet is trying to say something in a way you’ll KNOW it.

concrete- not abstract

“go in fear of abstractions” E Pound

original- new way of saying that gives you a new way of thinking about the thing
has a form- shape or structure the words take MATTERS; haiku, prayer, psalm, etc.

Where do we find poetry?

• Jump rope rhymes
• Mother Goose
• America the Beautiful
• hymns
• songs
• poems
• playground
• books
• Reader’s Digest- Life in these United States (Robert Frost)
• comic strips, cartoons
• music
• radio
• paper: editorials, qtd Tree by Sgt. Joyce Kilmer
• on the wall? “Foot prints in the Sand” wall hanging
• fancy magazines like Sat. Evening Post, The Atlantic Monthly
• children’s books
• Bible
• SF novels- John Ringo qts Kipling
• Fantasy novels- Christopher Stasheff quotes lots of folks

Who likes poetry?
English teachers

Okay, but who else?

police officers
singers
song writers
poets
people who like music
religious people
in the Bible (New Testament), Paul, quoting a poet about the people
story tellers of all kinds

Who writes poetry?
people who care a lot

• missionary
• dr., nurse, soldier
• fundraiser
• spokesperson—like Michael J. Fox for Parkinson’s

people who like to play with words
people who read a lot
newspapers
classics
journals (genre specific mags for people in certain fields)
fiction, nonfiction
poetry
people who write a lot
curious folks
people who are willing to work hard to improve—

often requires a lot of revision

How do they write poetry?
different ways

• Virgil (Roman poet) walked in gardens all day long.
• Thought it was a good day if he got one new line.
• Elizabethan poet Ben Jonson wrote a prose paragraph first.  Then wrote poem on topic.
• John Milton was blind.  Composed Paradise Lost in his head and dictated it.
• Frank O’Hara would eat lunch with friends. Go back to work.
• Type one poem. Get back to working.
• Maya Angelou writes on a bed.  She’s been doing it so long she has a callous on one elbow.

How can you write poetry?  How do people do it?

Colonial America
Kept a commonplace book. Place to write ideas down.
Artist’s Way-says to write three poems a day
Keep a journal
Keep a book where you put in “interesting stuff”
Someone gave me one when I was 15. I loved it. Still cut articles, etc.
Practice writing traditional poems
“paying your dues”
Hemingway didn”t write grammatically correct sentences in his novels, but he knew the rules.

Keep a list of subjects to write about.
Ray Bradbury makes a list of nouns. Eventually many become stories.

Story critique (essay)
This is a five-paragraph essay.
1st paragraph:
Introduction
Capture your audience’s attention, maybe with a question or an interesting idea.
Give the background for the story. Include who wrote it and when and its name.
2nd paragraph:
Character and setting
Who is in the story? Where are they in the story? When does the story take place?
3rd paragraph:
Conflict and plot
What is the storyline? What happens in the story? What do the characters do and say?
4th paragraph:
Climax and theme/moral
When does the story resolve itself? What is the story about? What does it try to teach?
5th paragraph
Conclusion
Give your opinion on the story without using personal pronouns.
The last sentence should be reflected/repeated in the essay title. (This brings your whole paper full circle and makes it more coherent.)

Obviously this is for students. But it’s a good thing to offer them, especially if you have students who have not been exposed to the internet before.

Hints for doing an on-line search:
1. Make sure you spell any names or words correctly.
2. Include clue words that are in the directions.
An example from Hawthorne is “themes, influences, subject matter, and critical reception.”
3. Use different forms of clue words.
Example: critic, critique, criticism, critical.
4. Examine sites that seem to have what you want. Sometimes the section you want is embedded in the site and is not easy to find. You have two choices; your first is to quit and the second is to keep looking.
5. If you find a good site, bookmark it.

Examples of good sites:
Perspectives in American Literature
A list of links in literature by category.
The Victorian Web for all things Victorian.
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature with just about everything in it.