Good Adjuncts,

If you haven’t taken the document “What is an Adjunct?”and given it to your students, please do so or download it.  To educate is to activate.

But that said, one document alone cannot fully educate or activate.  We need to educate and activate through multiple measures and activities.

And they can and should be thoughtful, insightful.

From now until Feb. 25^th I will be posting activities every two or three days that I encourage all adjuncts to take up.  If you have ideas, send them to me in your comments section, and provided they don’t call for anything that involves a violation of the law, hurting oneself or others, or clearly result in a person’s getting fired, I’ll re-post it.

Whether you do these actions or not is up to you and your group. Do what is true to yourself.

Anyway, here’s first my first action item: Adjuncts, claim your spaces.

Adjuncts, too many of you know what it is like to have to do prep work or meet with students when you have limited or no adjunct space, but because you are a good adjunct, you make that time to do prep, or meet with a student.  Ideally, it’s in an adjunct office, but too often, it’s in a cafeteria, a student lounge, outside in the hall way, a courtyard, etc.

Show everyone just exactly where that space is.

First, get yourself a relatively large post-it, or a 3”x 5” notecard and put some scotch tape on one side. On either the non-adhesive side of the post-it, or on the non-tape side of the notecard, write in large and legible letters “ADJUNCT OFFICE SPACE”.  Attach the post-it or card to the nearest table top, door wall, or surface so that it can be clearly seen.

Now naturally, if you’re in a cafeteria or coffee shop, or any kind of high traffic space, it’s going to get removed.  In fact, you want to attach it so that it can be easily removed.  That’s OK, but let someone else remove it.

Later, when you’re back at the same place, put up another card and post-it.

From here on out, it’s simply rinse and repeat.

Over time, a larger audience of post-it and notecard readers and removers are going to understand your reality, and if they’re truly bothered by your message, maybe they will see that a specially designated space for adjuncts to do their jobs would be better than what’s happening now.

For those of you who might want to be a bit more proactive, if one your campus there is an empty office that is not being used, Put up a post-it or card with the question “FUTURE POSSIBLE ADJUNCT SPACE?” Like before, people will take down your card or post-it—simply put another one up.  The admin may in fact find another use for the office, but so what? Getting them to tell you what that office will ultimately be used for and why forces them to be more accountable to you.

Now off to your work  my good adjuncts.  Claim your spaces.

Geoff Johnson

A Good Adjunct