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NAWD Action Item #7: Make and Wear a T-shirt

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Good Adjuncts:

For those of you who like something more visual and durable (It’s not like after Feb. 25th the skies will cleave open and adjuntification will disappear and birds will sing),  a T-shirt may be the better way to go.  I know there are a few designs already out there, but this is one that we came up with at Adjunct Crisis.

t-shirt 1t-shirt 2

If you want, I can send the jpegs of the designs so you can make one for yourselves.  For any San Diego Mesa College or Southwestern Community College folks who want a shirt, I’ll be contacting you via campus email.

Geoff Johnson

A Good and Sartorially Splendorous Adjunct

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NAWD Action Item: Show This to Your Students

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Use this video of Stacy Patton, one of the few journalists covering one of the most important stories of our time, the adjunctification of higher education, as part of your NAWD actions. Show it to students. Show it to other faculty (especially, perhaps, tenured ones). Patton describes what amounts to a lost generation of scholars, “stuck” because they have had the great misfortune of having studied and committed to serving society at a time when the ideology of capitalist exploitation was ascendent.

Patton’s brief comments expose the human cost of adjunctification. The implementation of the corporate model in higher eduction has been happening for a couple of generations. That’s hundreds of thousands of scholar-teachers whose contributions to society have been marginalized and stifled by exploitive and impoverishing labor conditions. Of course, the adjunctification of higher education is just part of the creation of precariat labor across society.

It is important that we communicate to students how they, like us, are caught in the precarious workforce bind. Many of us have student loans we can’t pay because of low wages; likewise, our students are headed this way as well. It does not have to be so. We need to radicalize students as well as ourselves, to resist the neoliberal assault on higher education.

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NAWD Action Item #5: Write Number(s) on the Board Which Show Adjunct Reality

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Good Adjuncts:

If either any of the other adjunct action items haven’t suited your fancy, or if you want to try a different tack with your students, it’s often the case that numbers speak louder than words.

So here’s what you might do…

At the beginning of the class, and right in the middle of the board write a number.  Say nothing.  As you continue to teach and use the board, work around the number, but leave the number in the center of the board.

After a while, or in some cases, immediately, a curious student will likely as the significance of the number you put on the board, and of course you will then need to explain it to him or her, and if done right, this id going to generate discussion.

If this doesn’t work, you can simply lead students into a “guess the meaning of the number” game.

Here are some numbers I like to throw out:

53% or 58%:

The amount I am paid proportional to a full-timer, depending on district, for the same teaching hour.

4

The number of times I have been on employment in the last two years.

41,731.80

My Last year’s salary

84,205.00

What I would have made as a Full-timer with the equivalent years of teaching and education

17

The number of units I teach at the above salary

15

The number of units a full-timer teaches for the higher salary listed above

55-60

The number of actual hours I work during a teaching session

3

The number of consecutive days I went without seeing my then young son awake in spite of living in the same house due to my work schedule

1

Times my wife, near having a nervous breakdown, threatened to leave me because of my work schedule

286, 000

The number of miles I had on my 1984 Mazda Sundowner Pickup before I got rid of it last year.

4

The number of times I was unable to make it to class in a five-year period due to car trouble with said car.

146,000

The number of miles on my “new” car when I got it.

21

My true average hourly wage after earning an MA +30 units, graduating with honors, and 26 years of teaching experience, with 15 of which being specifically in Higher Ed.

20

The number of extra unpaid tutoring hours I provided to at-risk students for my composition class.

8

The number of students who would not have passed without the extra tutoring

Give ‘em the numbers good adjuncts, make ‘em know.

Geoff Johnson

A Good Adjunct

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“What is a an Adjunct?” has been Edited

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Good Adjuncts,

Thank you for coming to the blog. I know many of have read or downloaded the “What is an Adjunct?” piece.  When I initially posted the piece, I thought I had saved some changes to obvious errors in the text, so what many of you may have seen is a text with more than a few glaring grammatical and missing word errors.  In effect, I was a “bad” adjunct.  I have since edited to the document.  If you haven’t read it yet, check it out and give it to your students.

Anyway, I’ll be back tomorrow with another action item.

By the way, I’d love to get some of your ideas good adjuncts.  Post them in the comments, or if you want, you can email me at mixinminao@gmail.com, and we’ll post it as a main article.  We want contributors!

Keep strong and let’s make people pay attention on February 25th.

 

Geoff Johnson

A “good” adjunct

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An Adjunct Poem

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Good Adjuncts,

This is by my colleague at Southwestern College Erin Vrugic:

 

          A 7 Letter Word

                       A

                       Dirty seven letter word

                    unJustly describing

                      oUr Walmartification

    of AmericaN higher education, Faculty

                     ACross the United States.

                      Together we stand,

                    together we rise

                    to support equal labor rights

                    for all.

You’re so right Erin.

Geoff Johnson

A Good Adjunct

http://erinbrownvrugic.weebly.com/

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NAWD Action Item #4: Make Stickers and Wear Them

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Good Adjuncts:

We need visibility and it can’t just come from a teach-in in a lonely room, or a one-time protest in a main campus space.

Some of you, for one reason or another, cannot or do not want to participate in the latter, so, as with all of the action items I post here, is a small and easy thing one can do for oneself, while involving students, and in fact, anyone else who happens to agree that the conditions and practices of adjunctification need to end.

Make stickers, wear them and distribute them to others.

This is much better than going the button route.  Buttons are relatively expensive, and tear up people’s clothes.  Stickers are by and large the opposite.

Below are the designs for ones we are ostensibly using as San Diego Mesa and Southwestern Community Colleges in San Diego and Chula Vista respectively.  For those blog readers who are at either of those colleges, I should have them out in about a week.

I’m hoping to get a few people wearing them before the 25th so that we can get others to buy in on the big day.

By the way, if you don’t like these designs, then by all means make your own.

Geoff Johnson

The “Good” Adjunct

sticker cut
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NAWD Action Item #3: Have Fun! Make Your Point With a Little Comedy

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Good adjuncts:

It’s important we get out there and sell the message about how adjuntification is messed up and needs to change, but we’re not going to succeed by simply being strident.  When it come to the world at large, there’s a long line of hard luck stories, of which we are but one.  Parody and satire can go a long way to move the masses.  For now, I’m sharing my own attempt at this.  It’s a parody of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” simply titled “adjunct”. For those unfamiliar with the song, here’s the original “Thrift Shop” video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes

I’m hoping somehow I can get this made into a Youtube video.  I don’t know if I will, but those of you out there more talented or creative who may have some creative ideas of your own–please share them, and I’ll post them.  Anyway…

Adjunct
(To the tune of Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop”)

Hey, professor, can you help me with my …?

Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye (many times)

Gotta fly, gotta fly, gotta fly, yeh (x9)

I’ve got to drag my ass
To another college campus
I-I-I’m racing, to teach another section
Yes I‘m a fucking adjunct

Nah, walk up to the class like, “What up? I ‘m real prof
I’m like so downplaying that I’m an adjunct
I drag in the books and talk real cocky
That students forget that I’m just shit grade jockey.”
Bladder swollen, my eyes all bloodshot, too much coffee
Bags packed with stacks of essays, students waitin’ expectantly
Probably shoulda gone first, gotta return papers before I
(Pisssssssss)
But shit, it was 9:05! (I’m late)
Holdin’ it, strain’ it, bout to go and put em into peer groups
Passing up on the lesson plans I worked on the night before
Unclear and sketchy, fuck it man
I strutting and stalling and
Can bolt the classroom and I’m hella happy I got to go pee
I’ma gettin’ fastfood pay, I’ma gettin’ fastfood pay
No for real—ask at payroll—can I get a dollar meal (Thank you)
Back at teachin’ my cellphone’s ringin’
In my Trader Joe’s bag I go diggin’
I found a whiteboard marker, a dried out whiteboard marker
I whet it with my tongue, then tried on a chalkboard
Hello, hello, my ace man, my mello
Full-time ain’t got nothing on my fringe course, hell no
I could take student essays, correct them, sell those
The admin heads would be like “Aw, he like nailed the SLO’s.”

I’ve got to drag my ass
To another college campus
I-I-I’m racing, to teach another section
Yes I‘m a fucking adjunct

What you know about grading essays through the weekend?
What you knowin’ about living on only ramen?
I’m grading, I am grading, I’m searching all through the papers
One man’s trash, that’s my last class’s coursework
Thank the department for cancelling my course just last minute
‘Cause right now I’m sellin’ my plasma
I’m at the thrift store, you can find me trying dress clothes
It’s not, Halloween, I’m searchin’ in that section
For dress shirts, and dockers, and boxers, or blazers
I’ll take those red Hawaiian neckties, fifty cents, I’ll buy that motherfucker
The two-way belt with broken buckle on that motherfucker
I hit the office and they stop in that motherfucker.
They be like, “Oh, that adjunct—he hella poor.”
I’m like, “Yo—that’s ten dollars at the Target.”
Half off on Tuuesdays, let’s do adjunct addition
10 dollars for a dress belt—that’s almost two full days of food
The reality of your salary bro
And having the same situation as 70% of faculty
Peep game, come take a look through my telescope
Tryna get a full-time job and you hella won’t
Man you hella won’t

I’ve got to drag my ass
To another college campus
I-I-I’m racing, to teach another section
Yes I‘m a fucking adjunct

I wear those thrift store clothes
I feel expendable
I’m hauling this big ass bag
From that campus down the road
I wear those thrift store clothes
I feel expendable
I’m hauling this big ass bag
From that campus down the road

I’ve got to drag my ass
To another college campus
I-I-I’m racing, to teach another section
Yes I‘m a fucking adjunct

Is that your curriculum vitae?

Enough, now get busy good adjuncts!

Geoff Johnson

A good adjunct

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National Adjunct Action Day Poster

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From my colleague Jessica Thompson at San Diego City College

National Adjunct Day Poster

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NAWD Action Item #2: Claim Your Actual Hours–Make a Pie

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Good Adjuncts,

Most students, even if they get what an adjunct is, don’t understand how you are paid in relation to the work that you do.  Make them see it.  Make a pie chart.

In most cases, adjuncts are simply paid for their hours in the classroom, with some adjuncts in more appreciative districts being offered small stipends for limited office hours.

To make your students really understand your job, show them by presenting them with a pie chart that shows what you do versus what you’re paid for.

There’s a very simple function for this in Microsoft Word.  It’s easy to create and post on facebook or blackboard, or to simply print out and give to the class. You can even draw it on the board for them.

Below is but an example.  By the way, my hours are actually a little more for the grading and professional development, but I’m playing it conservative, and here’s the real kicker–I only get paid 32 weeks a year (Fall and Spring Semester).

Work Pie Chart

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NAWD Action Item #1: Adjuncts, Claim Your Spaces

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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. 25th 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