Inside the Current Issue

Reports from the Front: The Adjuncting Experience

In this special section... The Tensions of Teaching Marriah Star Critical Adjuncting Kimora Reflections of an Adjunct Teacher Daphna El-Roy On Love, Hate and Adjuncting Dan Skinner Graduate Students: Sign your Union Cards! Andrea Morrell Against Tuition Remission, Against PSC Adjunct Unionization Spencer Sunshine The Value of Student Evaluations Jonathan R. Wynn Experts Ask: Do We Need Adjunct Pedagogy? Mark Wilson The New Proletarian Academy James Hoff Teaching Shakespeare with an Eastern European Accent Szidonia Haragos

Reflections of an Adjunct Teacher

Daphna El-Roy

My name is Daphna El-Roy and I'm a reaction junkie. I want to see the raised eyebrows when I teach about forced sterilization of people with developmental disabilities. I love activities that others are afraid of - like public speaking (which is pretty convenient if you want to teach). When I first required students to present in class, I discovered that some didn't quite share that passion (their crying and trembling tipped me off). Aside from accommodating them, I encouraged and provide resources for help so they could work on overcoming the problem to help beyond the scope of the course, not limit their professional opportunities. Though I only found out about it relatively close to the end of the semester, I felt that I was potentially initiating the beginning of an important change for these students.

One presentation in particular that stands out began with a quote by a student who worked with mentally retarded adults. One of the women she worked with reported sexual abuse. This student chose to read intervention articles on something that personally mattered to her. The class was dead silent. Although it compromises efficiency, I want students to choose topics instead of assigning them. In my Learning and Behavior Analysis class, it is great to see students pick a target behavior of their own that they care about. Notables include a student aiming for yelling at her husband less, and another student worked on talking to his father more.

The summer session is intense, but good secretarial support helps with administrative issues. It is tricky to determine how much material to cover because students get the same credit as if they were taking the course in the fall - but summer classes fly by. I like providing multiple methods of instruction to make the material accessible to students with different learning strengths, to emphasize different points, to make it more interesting, and to break up the structure of a long class period. I was glad that we could discuss touchy topics (e.g., abortion following prenatal screening and diagnosis of Down Syndrome) during which opposing views could be explored. Other activities included original crosswords I created for reviewing material individually, taking an intelligence test given to soldiers during World War II, watching videos (having the facilities making that possible is helpful) and discussing them, doing activities in small-group format, having students quiz each other in pairs from index cards they prepared with a term on one side of the card and the definition on the other. I think it's important to encourage students to work together in groups some of the time; students are great resources for each other.

Although I like the freedom of teaching as-you-feel-like-it conducive to adjuncting, I suppose that if I taught more regularly I would have an opportunity to teach some of the same students again, to push beyond the limits of a single class. I like to receive e-mails from students telling me about their graduate school plans and helping (e.g., with information about jobs). As an undergraduate, I had mixed experiences with adjunct and tenured professors. When it was time to ask for reference letters for graduate school I realized that five of my psychology professors were graduate students, so the pool of people to ask for a recommendation was not as large as I thought it was.

Aside from the connections with the students I taught, I benefited from brainstorming with other professors and accessing their materials. When I needed another teacher to substitute for me, I was grateful for my colleague's willingness to help and to add something of their own besides the material I provided. I like how preparation to teach serves both as a review and an opportunity to learn new material, and how students' questions make me think about the material in new ways. I always like seeing how someone didn't understand something and then did after explanation. Assessing comprehension in an effective and efficient way is tough - nods and knowing looks are great when you want to believe you are doing well, but open-ended questions that require writing provide a better measure.

I think it would be good to carry over the practice of evaluations by departmental survey and experienced professor into the summer sessions. For purposes of improving my courses, aside from making notes-to-self, I would repeatedly survey my students in writing (anonymously) on my own (the sometimes-conflicting opinions about the same activities are interesting). Students also find other ways to express their opinions and share them, for example ratemyprofessor.com. It is important to focus on good teaching, and some of what that entails may not rate high in a popularity contest (that can include preferences for easy tests, no papers, etc.). In the final analysis, it be best to keep in mind my dad's definition of a good teacher - someone who makes you love the material.

Daphna El-Roy has a PhD in Learning Processes Psychology and teaches at Queens College.