Waiting

Fiscal crisis are the norm all around the country. In California those of us who work in education are anticipating the results of a ballot measure on the November election. For many of us, I would guess that the passage or non-passage of this particular proposition is nearly as important as the presidential race.

If the measure passes, the community colleges will be able to avoid cutting more classes. If it does not pass, the cuts will be devastating to the education of thousands and thousands of students. The reduced class offerings also means layoffs for faculty and staff: a lot of unemployment.

The signs of waiting vary. One school has created two different schedules for spring classes. I haven't heard the particulars yet, but it would seem that we will be given tentative schedules with the understanding that big changes may occur after the election; in other words our classes come with fewer guarantees than usual. Usually we know before mid-October what we are teaching in January so that we have plenty of time to plan and order books, etc. For adjunct instructors, the possibility of a class being cut or taken over by a full-time faculty member is always a possibility until 2 weeks into the semester. Although historically this a rare occurrence, without passage of this tax measure, we could order our books and begin planning in earnest only to find out that no books or syllabi will be needed.

Perhaps the most telling sign of waiting is the types of job openings at this level. There are small surges in schools advertising for adjunct positions. So far there are no postings for full-time positions. None. Even the adjunct positions are vague about start dates and often include language like, "as needed."

I wonder if the measure passes if the collective release of breath will stoke the embers of dying hiring committees enough that a sudden surplus of full time openings will become available. I can actually imagine the hiring frenzy once departments all over the state have the ability to loosen their fiscal belts enough to take in full breaths. Once the oxygen flows to the collective brain power will they begin to fill the void left by retirements, cuts and natural attrition?

From one fiscal point of view, hiring part-time employees is far less expensive than full-time tenure track. We earn considerably less per hour, often contribute, unpaid, to committees and have access to fewer, if any, benefits. We are not required to work unpaid, but many of us attempt to step into the void left by hiring freezes and staffing cuts because we genuinely want to help our colleagues and our students. If we are hoping for full-time work down the road, the committee work looks great on a resume.

The other, more realistic but less discussed, fiscal perspective is that without dedicated, full-time employees completing the work of the college, a great deal of work left undone has negative effects on students. This is as true at the staff level as at the faculty level. Lost or unseen information creates an often unpredictable, and always negative, impact. Losing any students within the system is harmful, for the student and the college.

The landscape of higher education is in the midst of a mutant evolution. Evolution occurs as a response to a change, a mutation. The financial needs of colleges are changing as the funding mechanism changes. California can no longer guarantee open access to higher education; that legacy is about to be taken off life support. One result of the fiscal changes at the community college level is a shift in priority towards students who are focused on specific goals: vocational training, graduation and transfer. The local community college will no longer be the place to go when you want art, jewelry making, dance or exercise classes; personal enrichment and lifelong learning will no longer be viable or supported goals. If you can't make up your mind what to major in, you better get out now. Too many units means you aren't able to register for classes because you clearly aren't goal oriented enough to be here.

Change is change, the colleges we know today are vastly different than what they were a few generations ago. Santa Rosa Junior College is called a junior college because at one time there was a distinct kind of school that needed that label. Ultimately the concept became obsolete and the community college became the new label to fill the new needs, a response to the changes. Community colleges now are shifting their focus from communities to students. The name, the label, may not change, but how the system caters to students is and will continue to change.

In the meantime we wait to see how those changes will play out. Wait for November. Wait for the election results. Wait to see which changes will occur and which will be left behind.

The Pain of Attack

This week I learned that I am the target of a formal complaint, my first, by a former student. This is an adult student; I teach at the community college level.

The attack seems to be aimed largely at who I am as a person; that my open and honest personality is being perceived as inappropriate and offensive. This despite the fact that I am honest from the first day of class about who I am and how I teach. This despite the fact that on more than one occasion I reacted to this student’s concerns about the way a particular subject was being handled in the classroom and immediately took steps to validate not only his viewpoint, but the potentiality that his viewpoint was silently shared by one or more classmates.

He was offended by the fact that I claim “fall in love” with my students, and so take steps to set boundaries. I ask students to address me by my title (Mrs. or Ms.) and last name, not my first name, the more generally accepted informal manner of instructors at this level. He was offended by the fact that when he expressed concern over subject matter and how it was handled in the book we were reading, that his classmates didn’t agree with his viewpoint. He felt that I allowed a disrespectful atmosphere to be created because they did not agree with him. When I then opted to allow students to forgo of a viewing of a video that someone who shared his viewpoint might find offensive, and at some point in that offer that I made eye contact with him, he was outraged. He left out the part that I made eye contact with most of the students hoping to let them know that they would not be penalized in any way if they weren’t interested in the video that was scheduled to play that day. He did, however, leave out the fact that I sought him out separately to further validate his feelings and thank him for bringing the subject up.

He was offended that he now knows that I was hurt as a child, although the specifics of offense were not discussed, and that I was abandoned by my parents. He was offended that I used humorous stories about my family to teach lessons on paragraph structure or literary character development.

He accused me of not being sensitive to different learning styles, while openly pointing out that I had used discussion, power point, writing and videos in my teaching. He feels that I need training in sexual harassment, sensitivity training and to learn more about teaching to different learning styles.

The kicker here is that he is a good student, not someone who blames me for a bad grade. He didn’t feel the class was academically rigorous enough. Of course it wasn’t; he really didn’t need the class academically, but the school requires it. He did learn, his writing did improve and he did earn a very high grade. I suppose in his mind, his view is made more valid by the fact that he earned a high grade.

It is difficult to react appropriately to a complaint about my personality and personal style. Initially I was concerned that if a student thought my personality was inappropriate, then I would be reprimanded by my superiors and potentially fired. When I first read the letter of complaint, I felt the need to apologize for the way I presented and supported the material. I’m not sure what is sadder: the fact that this student chose to attack me, or the fact that I felt the need to apologize for being me.

Last week two current students pulled me aside to speak privately. One thanked me for sharing my personal story about returning to school. She has been working for years towards transfer to a UC and when I spoke about graduating with my AA degree and walking in the ceremony a full year before I transferred to a four year university, she realized that she too needed the validation I spoke of. She is very grateful; she says that she is inspired by me and my story, and she has since shared my story with the people in her life. Another student, the same week, thanked me for sharing information about my dysfunctional family because she sees many similarities between her situation and mine; she feels connected to the course, more than she usually connects in school. That connection is likely going to help her succeed now and in the future.

So why does this one complaint bother me so much? I suppose it is because it dances dangerously close to the buttons that surround my abandonment and abuse issues. Reacting to pain as a child tended to lead a question by my parental units about what I had done wrong to provoke the hurt. The assumption seemed to be that I had done something wrong and deserved to be hurt, or that I brought the pain on myself. Being blamed for the wrong done to me seems to be a running theme from my childhood. I spent my entire childhood, and an oversized chunk of my adulthood, wondering what was so fundamentally wrong with me, something I was so blind to that I couldn’t change, that would cause my bio-parents to leave me, or other adults feel that they could assault me without consequence.

A colleague pointed out that intelligent people tend to try and understand what part of a difficult situation they actually own. I have gone over and over the time spent with this student in my head, but it seems that the only thing I could have changed that would have made this student happy was myself. I can’t do that. I won’t do that.