New Assignment....

A couple of new developments: I have been moved from level 5 to level 2, yes, demoted in my opinion. I will be on the main campus in a trailer, which is well-equipped. I will only be working 2 nights a week, which will be nice in a way although the money will not be. I have to teach with another teacher, too.

I won a minigrant, which was a laptop for the students to use in class, but I don't know how to use it with level 2. The event was actually a fund raiser... and that made sense when someone said that the function of the dean nowadays is to be a fundraiser, not an academic dean at all.

end of the line for ESL level 5?

So just as I was congratulating myself about surviving the semester and telling myself that, well, next semester will be easier, my class is cancelled for next semester. No rooms available, numbers are down. I was upset for a week, and then I found out comp and other English jobs are open, so I'm applying. I also got a recommendation out of the deal. So welcome to the world of the adjunct: twelve hours of teaching a week and little to show for it: and no job security.

we have a union, I think....

As I wrote before, there are about 52 adjuncts in our illustratious developmental education department, but only 2 are full time employees. And they are the department heads for ESL.

Why should most of us be paid an hourly rate while two are paid at least twice as much for less teaching? They also receive medical benefits while we don't. I just don't see the logic of it if we are a union.

Furthermore, I have never heard of so many adjunct instructors before. Even IVC has more full time instructors than us.

So what is the college doing with all its savings? Who knows.

And what is the union doing to help us? I see proposals but nothing that will fundamentally change our position of inferiority and poverty.

Labor issues at the local community college

I found out at our "department" meeting that there are only two (2) full time faculty members. The rest of us--about fifty--are adjuncts who work the same gruelling number of hours a week, twelve, as the full time "people." And one full timer is retiring, and the college has no immediate plans to replace her. The position is put on a priority list by the college; it is just one value to be weighed among others.

What ever happened to site based management? This community college has just passed a bond as well and is in a very affluent area. Yet, the instructors seem to have no power or even right to consultation.

These are issues I will be pursuing. Having only two FT instructors is not even ethical.

Joe Grammarian is back....

In high school I was the king of Warriner's grammar program, or now we would say "system." I was great at every level: the green freshman book, the white second level, etc. I was damn good at grammar and loved every little explanation followed by 19 exercises....

Until I started teaching as an adjunct.... Now the pc book is Azar, which someone said was modeled after Warriner's. Again, few explanations and many exercises.

The conclusion is the same: I do the best I can to answer some great questions by the students, but I always come away thinking about the arbitrariness of it all. As I said in class in reference to grammar, "rules are made to be broken, and Murphy's law applies: 'if anything can go wrong, it will at the worst possible moment.'"

After three weeks....

We have some new tables and chairs--well a few anyway, thanks to the dean helping me retrieve out of storage. It was quite a workout, actually. But a few more students are happy and more comfortable in, as we say "423 Storage."

A few students are still frustrated when there are more than one right answer. Boy, what if I introduced them to transformational grammar and PoMo!! One student was genuinely upset because in her dictionary, the past tense of weave was "weaved" and our book said "wove" and "woven."

Some language learners, including my wife, get very upset with ambiguity in English grammar.

And one of the pitfalls of our program is that yes, for the most part, are students learn grammar. But they are a little weak in writing and pronunciation. Yet, they the students expect me to keep hammering away on grammar.

What did I get myself into?

So I am teaching ESL level 5 to adults. I am working four nights a week, with 12 hours of classtime. But in addition it takes me 2 hours to prepare and correct papers each afternoon.

Furthermore, many students have not even purchased the textbook; lucky we have some class copies. But of course they go home empty handed, unless I make them worksheets. If not, they will have nothing to study from and will probably have little chance of passing the final. And if they do not pass the final, they do not go on to the next level.

So now I have to find and make copies. First, I had to purchase the workbook... for around 35 dollars. Then I found out it doesn't have many exercises for our problem area, future perfect progressive tense.

My final thought: is this my life's work, to teach English to English language learners, whether adults or children???? How did I end up doing this? And we have little or no access to computers.... grammar, grammar, grammar, you are a cruel master.