I’m sitting in my office on a warm Monday morning, ready for the first day of fall semester classes.
I’ve been in this same office — at this same desk — since 1994, when I was first hired as a tenure-track instructor at Pasadena City College. In 1994, I didn’t have a computer on my desk. In 1994, I had very different framed photographs to gaze at. In 1994, I had a very different office mate (my newest colleague, Lynora, just moved in last week.) I note, however, that I have the same darned office phone — an ancient plastic contraption that has been dropped dozens of times but still somehow survives.
I can’t think of many peers of mine who’ve had the same full-time job since 1994. I was 27 when I was hired full-time (I’d already been teaching here as an adjunct for a year); to have the same job at 40 is increasingly rare. Many of my peers have had three, four, or five different serious jobs in that same time span.
When I was hired over thirteen years ago, I said to everyone who would listen that this was my “dream” job, one I would have “forever.” (I wrote at length two years ago about my reasons for preferring the community college environment.) The danger in getting security so young is obvious: if not careful, one could stagnate very easily. There’s no “publish or perish” pressure at the community college, and few tenured professors are ever let go here, even in cases of serious incompetence.
Because I’ve had tenure and stability, I’ve had to push myself very hard to develop new courses, explore new avenues for writing and for public service. I have to remind myself not to settle for “good enough”. Ambition, in my case, cannot be about material comfort or security (though those are lovely things for which I am very grateful). Rather, tenure is an island on which to stand, a foundation on which to place my feet while I explore new opportunities (like rescuing chinchillas, writing books, finding novel venues for youth ministry). Indeed, those of us who have tenure — especially at a non-research-oriented place like the community college, have an obligation to use that “gift” of lifetime job security wisely and responsibly. For some, that wise and responsible use will come in the form of political activism; for others, it will come through exciting innovations in the classroom. But we waste this precious gift if we keep on doing the same thing, over and over and over again.
I will, howver, be talking on the same phone and sitting in the same seat that I was talking on and sitting in around the time the O.J. Simpson trial began.
I’ve been reading here and at other professor-type blogs the last couple of months, mostly because I’m an undergrad looking toward grad school and I feel it gives me a unique sense of my prospective career. It’s just plain interesting, too. I have never left a comment. I wanted to leave one here because I thought this was an issue that touched me personally…but not too personally. This is also largely in response to the community college post you linked to above, but I didn’t want to make comments to a two year old post.
I think there is a certain need for perspective when speaking about community colleges. I have had the personal student perspectives of attending a community college, a private liberal arts college and a major state university (currently at the University of Tennessee). As a student, I think location/socio-economic standing must be considered when speaking about the quality of community colleges. You teach in California. For two years I dated a man who taught at the City Technical College of New York. I attended a community college in Tennessee. From your description of your CC in California and my knowledge of my ex’s in New York, these are VERY different than the CCs offered in many regions between the coasts.
I went to one of the campuses of the major CC network in East Tennessee. Those two courses you mentioned would never be developed in a CC here, though this is Tennessee, right? There are no gender studies. There are only a handful of classes offered above the 200 level and the ones that are offered are only the most basic cookie-cutter courses offered for any department and aimed at transferring easily to a four-year college. Besides the constricted offerings, there was a thing called WebCT. For the majority of the classes I took before moving on to UT, there were no in class tests. You did your tests online at home with your textbooks and notes, and for all teachers knew, with (or for) other people. This is not a learning environment that encourages one to actually learn from or retain information. By the time I got to UT, I had to learn how to study again because my study habits had atrophied.
As for the teachers, I love teachers and always start from a position of admiration for the position. However, most of the teachers who taught well were either adjuncts at UT as well as the CC or were retired for the most part and only taught one or two classes. Looking at the department websites, the only faculty with Ph.Ds were usually department heads.
What further hindered the learning experience was the increasingly widespread practice of teacher broadcasting. They would have a teacher at one campus and broadcast his lecture to several other campuses, giving the teacher about 80 or more students. This was also NOT helpful to the learning process and a practice I can only contribute to penny pinching by the administration. I have never been deprived of an in-room teacher at any other college I’ve attended.
From my limited knowledge of the other side, from my ex who has been teaching at various types of schools for nine years, small town CCs are abusive of their workforce. In New York, from my understanding, there is a union rule that an adjunct cannot teach more than 10 credit hours at a school, which discourages schools from holding back on faculty (not to mention tenure track) positions and working the adjuncts like full time, with no benefits or job security. At least in the South, there are no such rules and schools, especially CCs, will give their adjuncts full time loads, pay them half the money they pay faculty and give them no benefits or job security. They have no incentive to do otherwise.
I suppose my point is that CCs in states like California and New York with high standards of living and education probably have stellar community colleges that offer more than some of the best private institutions around the country. However, when professors at my school bash CCs, they’re not doing it out of elitism, but out of annoyance that students transfer from CCs into their upper level classes at their University unable and completely unprepared to do the work of serious college study. It’s like the “adjusting to the lowest common denominator” approach of the failing public school systems in poor regions of the country spills over into CCs in the same regions.
I just wanted to point out the legitimate concerns regarding community colleges in more impoverished parts of the country. If I had kids, not only wouldn’t I send them to a community college in my part of the country, I’d move out of the South altogether, but that is a different rant entirely.
PS - Concerning my references to an “ex” above, I am aware of your younger/older articles and agree with them with the greatest enthusiasm.
Thanks, Jenny — sorry your comment was stuck in moderation for so long.
Outside of the California community colleges, I’m familiar with some in Oregon and Northern Virginia, but no others — and yes, we do have a far more complete set of offerings than at most JCs. PCC has over 25,000 students, most of whom are full-time and planning to transfer.
Thanks for the nice words about my posts on age-disparate relationships.
Proff Schwyzer,
I’m not sure if you remember me but I was one of your many students that you taught during the fall semester of 2007. I took your Women in American Society Class (I’m fairly certain you might remember me, I tended to disagree with everything…).
I decided recently that I wanted to interview my great great aunt using the questions that you had given us for our paper to interview an older woman (I loved that assignment by the way). As I was searching through my old notebook trying to find the sheet of paper I found instead, our course syllabus. On it you had put this website, something I had never noticed while I was taking your class. I decided that maybe, just maybe you had course information on your website but no, it’s a blog. I decided to look through your blog for the time that I was in your class and this entry struck me as so interesting just becuase I was a part of your class that semester.
I just wanted to thank you for that class, I enjoyed it immensly and I was also wondering, would you please e-mail me a copy of those questions?
blessings,
Elizabeth
When I get back in the office, I’ll do that this week, Elizabeth. Thanks for the note!