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

The Tensions of Teaching

Marriah Star

I'm in the middle of my fourth year as a political science PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center. I have been teaching CUNY undergraduates as an adjunct since the Spring of 2004, first as a TA, then as an Adjunct Lecturer. So far I have taught at City College, Lehman College, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Borough of Manhattan Community College. At Lehman College I have taught in the Freshman Year Instruction Program, in the College Now Department, and in the General Education department. The Adjunct experience has provided me with valuable lessons about the CUNY system, the New York education system, and the student learning experience in general. The most valuable lesson has concerned my role as a teacher in the context of the New York Education system. I can highlight three general principles, or tensions, that have shaped my experience.

The first and most obvious principle I have encountered is the tension between passive and active learning. An active learner engages material, questions it, criticizes it, and tries to fill in the gaps in knowledge left by the material. A passive learner is an indiscriminate consumer of information who simply regurgitates the information for a test. I have always been an active learner. When I started teaching I assumed that I would be encountering active students. At the very least, I had confidence in my abilities to turn passive students into active learners. The students I encountered have tested my abilities, and for the most part I have discovered that the students adapt to the teacher. If the students have a teacher who encourages active learning, the students will develop these abilities as well.

I consider myself to be a student's teacher. Having spent so many years as a student, I am familiar with the concerns and motivations that most students have. Since the CUNY system caters mainly to urban students, I know that most of my students are busy with multiple classes, and some even have to balance jobs and family commitments. Therefore, students want a teacher who provides a certain type of learning atmosphere. For instance, if a teacher is going to give them work, they want the work to be relevant to the topic, and not simply work to keep them busy.

This brings me to the second fundamental tension in any learning environment: on one hand, students can be forced to master the facts and concepts of a discipline; on the other hand, students can be invited to challenge those very facts and concepts in order to ultimately provide a more secure foundation for a discipline. Usually, the mechanism for mastering facts and concepts is rote memorization, measured by quizzes, multiple choice tests, and essay exams. In between these tests, the teacher who focuses on mastering facts and concepts usually lectures about a subject, expecting students to take meticulous notes. This forced method of education is a student's least favorite mechanism for learning. Instead, what students want is a discussion that focuses on challenging and verifying the concepts of a subject.

Unfortunately, what students want is not always what teachers provide. Many students consider themselves lucky if they get a teacher who emphasizes discussions that challenge and verify concepts for active learners, instead of teachers who simply lecture in a vain attempt to supply facts and concepts to passive learners. So, which should a teacher do, especially an adjunct lecturer who is training to become a stellar educator?

Finally, the third tension I have encountered: between teaching as intellectual snobbery and teaching as intellectual liberation. Any educator is faced with a fundamental dilemma. On one hand, we struggle to master concepts in our own disciplines, and we are forced to take tests that measure the acquisition of facts and concepts, including a written comprehensive followed by oral proposals and oral defenses. Since we are being tested, the natural assumption is that tests are based on a specific logic. I identify this as the logic of scarcity. A test acts as a sieve, making sure that only those people who have sufficiently mastered facts and concepts - usually through rote memorization - have the right to move on to higher academic levels. More difficult tests mean that fewer people will move on to these higher levels. It is tempting as an adjunct lecturer to treat students with the same kind of logic: construct courses in such a way so that half of them are likely to fail. This way, we can maintain control over a discipline as professional educators.

The problem is that students don't use the logic of scarcity when they are taking courses. Students are accustomed to diversity, both in the range of courses that they can take as electives, and in the range of classmates who take the courses with them. Diversity, in turn, gives them the assumption of abundance. This assumption is reinforced by the numerous text books on single topics. As a result, many students want to have a professor who shares this assumption of abundance of knowledge.

The outcome of these multiple sources of tension is three types of students that I have encountered in every college. There are the top students who are active learners, constantly using facts to challenge and develop concepts. These students are the most fun to teach and the most desired students in every classroom since they usually drive the direction of the discussion. Next, there are the middle students who are smart but passive. They have accepted the logic of scarcity, and the only concern they have is memorizing the facts, mastering the concepts, to get the A. They rarely contribute to discussions in the classroom because they don't expect discussions. They expect to be consumers of lectures. Finally, there are the bottom students who have become dejected by the rigid structure of the academic system. They want to learn actively, but they have had teachers who engage in passive learning. Thus, they simply give up. They don't expect to learn much, and therefore they don't learn anything.

It's these bottom students who are the most challenging because it is difficult to engage them in a topic. However, the dynamic of the classroom, and the engagement of the bottom and middle students, largely depends on where and when I have taught. It seems that the evening is the best times to teach students because even the bottom students are willing to take part in discussions that challenge concepts, at least if the teacher is willing to engage in discussion. The four-year colleges have more of the top students who have a greater knowledge base, but they also have more teachers who engage in passive learning. I have met many top students who are dissatisfied with the passive style of many tenured professors, and thus express satisfaction with my active style. The two-year community colleges have a mixture of top students who cannot afford a four-year college and middle or bottom students who simply want the credits from a college class. These students don't expect the teachers to engage in active learning, and so they are delighted when I promote discussion.

The most rewarding part of my adjuncting experience has been my ability to identify top students and help direct them to higher academic goals. I have had many top and middle students come to me for help with various applications, whether it involves getting a job, a scholarship, or a degree from another school. I helped a freshman at Lehman College transfer to Washington University, another freshman figure out which CUNY College would offer the best courses for his desired major, and high school students to figure out which colleges seek for possible admissions. In a sense, I have become a de facto career counselor for high school and college students. Many of these students have told me horror stories about the inadequate counseling at the New York City public schools, most of which have counselors who have way too many students. So, it has been my delight to take up the slack when students come to me for advice or help.

Marriah Star is a PhD student in the Political Science department.