The Adjunct

For those of you wondering what adjunct teachers get paid, here is my paycheck.

That is a one-month paycheck for one 3-unit class. Each district that I teach at pays me only once per month, not every two weeks. I receive five paychecks of equal size for this particular class. So, the total I get paid is $2,508.90 gross, $2,372.20 net, for one semester long 3-unit college class. Excluding summer classes, that means at this particular district if I were to pick up my maximum load of 10 units, both in fall and spring, then my yearly pay would be $16,726 gross. So that’s the short answer. As an adjunct, at an average district I get paid $16,726 per year.

By state law those 10 units are 69% of a full-time workload, and are the maximum that I can teach at any one district. So, just for laughs, let’s say the pay stayed the same and I got an additional 31% workload at another district, then I would be pulling in a total of $21,911.06 gross per year after we include that extra $5,185.06. This is all assuming a perfect workload, however, and it is never as easy as all that. For starters, at this district my department only offers 3 unit classes, and thus the most I could ever teach is 9 units per term, since there are no 1 unit classes. Also, I’ve never been asked to teach a full 9 unit workload, they just don’t have that many classes available. Sometimes I get two classes, but as you can see from my above paycheck, right now I am only teaching one class at this district. I currently am on the books at three districts, buy was only given classes at two of them.

Your pay will vary from district to district, especially when you teach at a district that has quarter terms instead of semesters, but for the most part the above numbers are the relative average.

Again, for the above district I am only allowed to teach a total of 10 units per term. Any more would make me a full-timer and qualify me for absurd luxuries such as medical and dental benefits, as well as paid time off. So, in order to carve out a living, I work at several different districts, picking up classes wherever I can. This is not an easy thing to do. Most districts are never hiring, not even adjuncts, and those that are seldom can give you more than a single class. Even if you do get a couple classes at a couple districts, they often overlap, and you are forced to decline some classes based on the unfortunate physical limitations that prevent you from being at two places at once. Damn you, Physics! I have found that once I tell a chair, “Sorry, but I am unavailable for that class,” then I almost never hear from them again.

So what do adjunct professors really get paid? Well, as you can imagine after reading the above, it varies from month to month, and term to term. The ideal would be to get four classes, which something I seldom manage to accomplish. Right now, I am teaching three. One is at the semester-based district, which means 5 equal paychecks from January 31-May 31. The other two are at a quarter-based district, which means three payments, ending on March 31. About six weeks ago, I found out they had another class for me in Spring (April-June), but as you can see, this will cause my monthly income to drop when the semester-based class ends in May. Aside from summer (which I will discuss in just one moment), the next semester is in the fall, and that means even if I manage to book classes (of which there is no guarantee) then I won’t get paid again until September 30. Hellllloooooo unemployment.

What about summer, you ask?

Here’s the deal with summer terms at most colleges: they are short, offer only a fraction of classes, and usually only go to full-timers and those with seniority. A summer class, on average, is about 6 weeks long. You get paid the exact same amount for this class as you would a spring or fall course, because technically it is the same amount of working hours compressed into a short, yet more intense, span of time. So take those five months of paychecks I was getting in the spring, and then compress them into one big fat lump sum. Considering that you get in six weeks what would have taken you five months to receive, summer classes are seen by most teachers as a gold mine.

The drawbacks are that these classes are long, often 4-5 hours per day, 4-5 days per week. As such, you might only get (or be able to handle) one class, and I have never heard of a district that gives anyone more than two summer classes to teach.

I just found out today that I will be teaching one class this summer. So instead of June, my paychecks will stop coming on July 31. I have no idea if I will be getting any classes, at any district, for the fall. If I do, the earliest paycheck is September 30. So, as I said before, Hellllloooooo unemployment.

Uh, hello?

Are academics different? This is the question Distinguished University Professor Stanley Fish asks in his latest New York Times Op-Ed blog. Professor Fish, as you might recall, recently wrote about adjuncts such as myself were the reason most universities were fast transforming into University of Phoenix clones. Professor Fish wasn’t done sharing his enlightened criticism of those instructors unfortunate enough not to be him, and so he decided to go after another non-issue, the professorial indulgences of academic freedom.

Fish:

Last week’s column about Denis Rancourt, a University of Ottawa professor who is facing dismissal for awarding A-plus grades to his students on the first day of class and for turning the physics course he had been assigned into a course on political activism, drew mostly negative comments.

The criticism most often voiced was that by holding Rancourt up as an example of the excesses indulged in by those who invoke academic freedom, I had committed the fallacy of generalizing from a single outlier case to the behavior of an entire class “Is the Rancourt case one of a thousand such findings this year, or it the most outlandish in 10 years?” (Jack, No. 88).

For those of you unaware of what a fallacy is, allow me to explain. A fallacy is an argument which may convince others but is not logically sound. It is essentially a defect in an argument which then causes the argument to be invalid.

Most people get introduced to fallacies in high school, and most colleges require all students to take at least one logic class which teaches not just how to identify logical fallacies, but why they are not a valid method of argument. It is too bad that, during his superior college education which Fish went on and on about receiving, Fish never had to take a class on fallacies. Or, I suppose, maybe he did have to take the class but just didn’t pay very close attention, because here in his article for the New York Times our Distinguished Professor begins by stating a fallacy of hasty generalization.

Now, as any freshman college class can tell you (did you spot the fallacy I just committed?), a hasty generalization involves basing a broad conclusion upon the statistics of a survey of a small group that fails to sufficiently represent the whole population.

E.g., “Wow! Did you see that teenager run that red light? Teenage drivers are really pathetic.”
This is otherwise known as Leaping to A Conclusion. Or, to paraphrase Professor Fish, “Wow! Did you read about that professor who just gave everyone an A on the first day of class? Professors have too much academic freedom!”

As Fish himself admits, he got hundreds of letters pointing out the flaw in his logic. Naturally, he disregarded these letters and instead insisted, “No, really guys, it’s totally what professors are like!” Or as he put it:

It may be outlandish because it is so theatrical, but one could argue, as one reader seemed to, that Rancourt carries out to its logical extreme a form of behavior many display in less dramatic ways. “How about a look at the class of professors who … duck their responsibilities ranging from the simple courtesies (arrival on time, prepared for meetings … ) to the essentials (“lack of rigor in teaching and standards … )” (h.c.. ecco, No. 142). What links Rancourt and these milder versions of academic acting-out is a conviction that academic freedom confers on professors the right to order (or disorder) the workplace in any way they see fit, irrespective of the requirements of the university that employs them.

Whoa! Slow down there, Professor. How exactly do you make the leap from your anecdotal fallacy of professors not arriving to class on time, or not being prepared for meetings (a guy on the internet posted about how he sees professors do this all the time, therefore it must be true!) to professors reordering the workplace in whatever way they see fit. As he slips down his slope, Fish desperately wants to start quoting Ghostbusters: “Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!”

College professors get a lot of freedom when it comes to running their classes. We can dress as we want, and be addressed as we prefer. We usually can choose what textbooks we teach from, and almost always can decide for ourselves if we want to lecture or do group work. We can shift the emphasis of our lessons to what we feel that emphasis should be upon. Most significant of all, we don’t have a boss looking over our back, and this is at the root of what is bothering Professor Fish.

You see, with great power comes great responsibility. If a teacher wanted to, then they could probably get away with cutting corners, such as ending class early (or starting it late), handing back essays without detailed comments, canceling lessons on core concepts, or just showing a lot of movies. I met enough teachers who do these things, some out of laziness, others out of disgruntled apathy, and even a few who don’t realize what it is they are doing (or not doing, as the case were).

But there are advantages to our freedom as well. I can choose the textbook that I feel is the most effective for my class. This may seem like a small matter, but I believe that if I was forced to use a different textbook for, say, my grammar class, then the quality of that class would decrease sharply due to my lack of familiarity and lack of ease with the book. Having the ability to judge for myself which book is best for my class is advantageous for all my students. I am a college professor, and I have been hired to profess, to convey a set of skills and base of information that requires my presence. I am not a customer service agent, I do not simply need basic training and a script to follow. My role in the classroom is the most important, so much so that my ability and will to succeed can effect whether a student succeeds. It is, in my opinion, one of the most important and sacred jobs there is. It does not mean I am sacred or holy, as Professor Fish sneering states some teachers think of themselves, but it means that I take my duty with the utmost gravity.

Fish:

It would be hard to imagine another field of endeavor in which employees believe that being attentive to their employer’s goals and wishes is tantamount to a moral crime But this is what many (not all) academics believe, and if pressed they will support their belief by invoking a form of academic exceptionalism, the idea that while colleges and universities may bear some of the marks of places of employment — work-days, promotions, salaries, vacations, meetings, etc. — they are really places in which something much more rarefied than a mere job goes on.

I disagree that my goals and my employer’s goals are different, because my employer is the university and I am the university. The Vice Chancellor of Planning, the campus security guards, the Human Resources office, these things are all in place because of one thing: the classroom. The school exists for the students, and by the teachers.

I do not believe that I could do my job effectively if I was micromanaged in the way Fish wants. At best, he is looking at academia from a very high position: the frustrated Dean who can’t get those miserable adjuncts to show up on time or stick to a lesson plan. He’d probably love The Adjunct Professor’s Guide To Success.

At our department meetings, angry letters from people no one has ever met come flooding in. They are letters from people like Fish, complaining about our productivity, something they have somehow managed to quantify into numerical form. They would like us to become proactive in getting up student enrollment. They would like to inform us that there is no money left to put paper in the copier, or buy us dry-erase markers. There is money to hire another 10 Vice Presidents, and they would like us to mentally congratulate these folks, whom we shall never meet, on their superior positions and salaries. They would like full-timers to crowd three to an office, and the adjuncts to continue going without any office at all. Fish would also like us to not think so highly of ourselves. We need to know our place, I suppose.

He concludes by saying:

Those who would defend academic freedom would do well to remove the halo it often wears.

I take great offense to that statement.

I am never late to class, in fact, I am always at least fifteen minutes early.

I have never once used my position to further my own political or personal agenda. I feel that to do so is a violation of my role as teacher. I do not tell them what I believe about any subject other than the subject of the lesson. In my advanced English classes, I teach them critical thought and analysis. After they have learned how to approach an issue with these skills, then they can make their own determinations.

Two of the headlines on CNN today demonstrated the great economic dissonance that is more and more prevalent in our country.

The first headline:

Top Republican unloads his mansions

Then, directly below it:

“Make every penny count, and count every penny.”

Compare the two articles, each dealing with the same economy. From the first article:

(CNN) — He has been estimated to be worth in excess of $250 million, but former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney may just be belt-tightening along with the majority of Americans.

Romney, the former business whiz and governor of Massachusetts, is looking to unload two of his four mansions, collectively valued in the currently-sour real estate market at close to $10 million.

Compare to this excerpt from the second:

(CNN) —Orman: If you don’t have a good savings rate and something happens, where are you going to go?

That’s when you all of a sudden start putting things on your credit cards — that you can’t do anymore.

That’s when you then start to become an aid, you know, where you’re asking the state to aid you — food stamps and everything.

What should strike you about this is the great disconnect between the two. This is not meant as any form of attack on Romney, nor Republicans. Democrats in Washington are millionaires as well, and even if President Obama only owns one home, his bank account is quite full, just like nearly all our leaders.

No, this isn’t about politics, but it is about a tension or clash resulting from the combination of two disharmonious or unsuitable elements: the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

As Orman tells people to pinch every penny, Romney unloaded a few of his spare mansions. As one talks about people going on food stamps, the other pulls in 20 million in spare change.

How can one world possibly understand the other?

Yet it is those penny-people who decide which multi-millionaire shall lead them, in both business and politics. And those chosen multi-millionaires shall try and see what they can do to make things right for the penny-people. It reminds me of one of those conversations where both people are talking to each other about completely different things, yet neither notices.

Fellow adjunct instructor and all around woman of letters Stephanie Han has written about her reaction after reading Naomi Wolf’s book, Misconceptions:

While she made a few good points, overall, she sounded so out of touch with the average working woman I wanted to throw the book out the window when I read it. The woe-is-me-and-my-group-of-friends-we-all-own-expensive-homes-and-are-lonely was insulting. Hers was not a perfect world but she didn’t seem to get that she had a much better situation than the burger slinging working person.

At the end of Orman’s interview, Larry King helped demonstrate the point I am trying to make by chipping in with his own ideas on what these penny people can do to stay afloat in these tough times.

King: Go cheap. Tip 15 percent, that’s it. Shop — bargain everything. … If tomatoes are 20 cents over there and 15 cents across the street, buy for 15 cents.

That’s right, the problem the penny people are having is that they must be tipping too high! Please, cut off those tips at 15% for your own good. Buy 15 cent tomatoes, because you’re gonna need every nickel.

PART 2
(Click here to read PART 1)

This seminar was not just a failure, but also a major failure. The idea behind this seminar was to show how collaborative learning can be more effective than traditional lecturing, but it ended up proving the exact opposite. We were unable to complete small tasks in a timely fashion (in fact, no task was fully completed). Most people complained of the tedium and irrelevance of the exercises in our groups, and keep in mind we were all teachers. Imagine a student’s reaction.

In addition to this, no information was successfully gained from the group work. Most of the time was spent with us sharing ideas that we already had, and new information was only gained when we left our groups and the professor leading the seminar proceeded to lecture further about the subject.

The theory is that a group exploring a topic collaboratively will be more successful than the traditional lecture, retain, and repeat (via test) method. There is some truth to this, and I use a combination of lecture, group work, and independent study in all my classes. However, it has become too trendy (and too easy) to reject traditional teaching methods in favor of a more “free-learning” experience. The professor leading the seminar told us that her classes are 100% collaborative learning environments. She hands out worksheets, organizes groups, and then lets the students figure it out in their groups. She said that she has a rule in which she will not answer any student’s questions about anything until that student has asked at least three other students if they know the answer. This includes everything from questions regarding the syllabus, to questions about the final exam. I couldn’t help but feel that one reason she prefers this purely collaborative method is that she simply has to hand out worksheets, and then sit back and let the students do the rest. I imagine the students who already posses the information and skills that the class requires will succeed in this environment (”Okay! We’re outlining a speech about our family today. I know how to do that, its easy!”), while those who are unclear and have questions will be unable to learn much (especially if they can’t ask their teacher until asking three classmates), and will ultimately fail the class (or, pass the class with a C, and move on having learned nothing).

Remember when I said that there was another voice of dissent during the Peanuts cartoon farce? After our groups had aborted, and we returned to the class as a whole, the professor leading the seminar commented on how allowing Rerun to explore his art more freely would likely make him a better artist. An instructor raised his hand, and told us that he was, in fact, an art teacher himself. He politely explained that if his students did not follow his specific instructions, it would not make them better artists.

“But don’t you think they should learn creativity?” she asked him.

“Yes,” he replied. “I think creativity is good, but if I have asked them to sketch still life, then I need them to follow my instructions and sketch still life. If they do something different, then they will not learn techniques such as cross hatching, or drawing perspective, or shadowing. If they all just did what they wanted and disregarded my instructions, then they would never learn these techniques on their own. One lesson leads to the next lesson, first you draw still life then you learn figure drawing, and you must learn one before the other. So perhaps in this cartoon the teacher was trying to teach the student a skill, and he refused to learn it because he just wanted to do his own thing. You can do your own thing all you want outside of class. You come to class to learn a skill that you cannot learn on your own. So you need to follow instructions and listen to your teacher in order to do this.”

I applauded him, as did a few others, but the professor leading the seminar suddenly got a look on her face as if she smelled a really ripe fart, and quickly moved on to the next group activity.

There was another moment where I looked proudly up at one of my fellow attending adjuncts. After the scavenger hunt, just before we were let out, the professor leading the seminar was again discussing the importance of group work, stressing the need to learn social skills and interaction. A chemistry teacher raised her hand and admitted that, even after our four-hour seminar, she still didn’t see how she could incorporate social interaction skills into her chemistry class. Again, the seminar leader responded by stressing ideas which only promoted the students interacting with one another, sharing their names and interests, working together to complete a puzzle, etc. She boasted that these social skills happened to be what her most prized class, Speech 10, was all about. A different instructor raised his hand and said, “Yes, I think these are some really good exercises for a Speech 10 class, but I think they may not have direct applications for a lot of other classes, even in Speech, that don’t set out to teach inter-personal skills as a goal. In fact, I teach Speech 1A and I mostly lecture. They independently give their speeches, and group work is kept at a minimum.”

“I don’t teach Speech 1A,” she told him in a hoity manner. “I teach Speech 10.”

“Well,” said the adjunct, “I do teach Speech 1A, and I couldn’t see using a lot of these activities in that class. They wouldn’t accomplish the goals of the class. It sounds great for Speech 10, but not Speech 1A. If I can’t even translate these exercises to meet my goals for a Speech 1A class, then I doubt other instructors here, who teach vastly different subjects, can use them as heavily as you’re saying we should.”

Frustrated, the professor leading the seminar blurted out, “It is important that these kids learn how to interact with one another!”

And there you have it. The fatal flaw in this seminar was that the professor leading it viewed her college students as children, and felt that shaping their ability to play well with others trumped any course objectives, skills or outcomes. If a fellow speech professor felt that this level of collaborative learning wouldn’t even apply to other speech classes, then as a teaching method intended to replace the traditional lecture it is fatally flawed.

At the end of the seminar I told her my classes utilized lecture, class discussion, independent study, and even a little group work. Of the four, my classes were primarily lecture and class discussion. I asked her if she considered class discussion, where all students are encouraged and required to voice their ideas, their analysis, their questions and concerns, to be a form of collaborative learning. “Aren’t we then functioning as one big group?” I asked her. “With me their as their teacher to guide the direction of the discussion, and make sure that all the learning outcomes are accomplished?”

“No,” she told me. “That isn’t collaborative learning. If all you do is lecture, and then just call on students who raise their hand, then they’ll never learn how to interact with each other.”

Oh well. At least they’d still learn class objectives such as cross hatching, or the periodic table of elements, or how to give a speech.

While this is a little (okay, a lot) of a jeer against Bush, I hope you will also view this as a cheer for academics. The former President liked to deflect criticism by saying that history shall be the only judgement that matters. Well, the historians have made a statement, and it is not in Bush’s favor.

From CNN

(CNN) – Former President Bush has only been out of office for less than a month, but historians have already delivered an early verdict on his presidency.

In a survey of over 60 historians conducted by C-SPAN, the 43rd president ranks the seventh worst (and 36th overall) in the nation’s history, just edging out Millard Fillmore.

That’s pretty harsh. Fillmore is ridiculously unfunny, as seen below.

Oh, Millard Fillmore. He was the last member of the Whig Party, wasn’t he? Good for him! Fuck Andrew Jackson, right?

Continuing…

At the top of the list, the historians rank Abraham Lincoln as the best president in the nation’s history, edging out George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt.

If only we could have a President who followed the writings of Abraham Lincoln, and tried to save our nation with policies modeled after Franklin Roosevelt’s.

Oh, wait.

I get it now.

The duck’s name is Mallard Fillmore, not Millard, and he’s a Republican.

Happy President’s Day!

PART 1
(Click here to read PART 2)

I recently attended a collaborative learning seminar, and although it provided me with great material for this blog, it did not do much in the way of making me a better teacher. On second thought, strike that, because it did make me a better teacher by way of showing me exactly what I should never do.

Collaborative learning is an unnecessarily fancy way of saying group work, and that is what this seminar was all about: how to give your students group work. This may seem like the most unnecessary, worthless, asinine waste of time, but I got paid $100 for attending.

Of additional interest to the site is the fact that all the attending instructors of the seminar were adjuncts. A tenured professor of speech led the seminar, and most of the activities seemed to be best geared for a speech class.

Here are my notes from the seminar, which I meticulously took in order to capture how it was both ineffective and of no use whatsoever. However, I’m afraid that the only accurate way to simulate the mind-crushing tedium of the four hour long seminar is to have a friend gently lower a refrigerator onto your head. Enjoy!

•We spent the first 45 minutes playing “The Name Game!” This is an icebreaker game where the entire class forms a circle, and then people introduce themselves one at a time, in clockwise order. The trick, however, is that before you can introduce yourself, you must first say “Hello, (name)!” to each person who has already introduced themselves. In other words, “Hello Sally! Hello Ted! Hello Vickram!” etc. The merits of performing this activity in Chemistry 1A, Physical Anthropology, or a World Geography class (all classes that various instructors present at the meeting taught) was never fully explained. It is beyond the capabilities of my comprehension why we had to actually engage in this activity ourselves, instead of just being told, “An effective ice-breaker is having everyone say their name, and also to say and remember the names of their classmates.”

We were told the The Name Game! took about 10 minutes, tops. Our seminar was about half the size of an average classroom, and it took us 45 minutes.

There were follow-up questions. “Should we have students give their last names too?” and “Would you advise us asking students to also name a hobby or activity that they enjoy?” Answer to the latter: Yes, if that hobby or activity begins with the same letter as their name.

•Next, the professor leading the seminar took about 10 minutes to explain the concept of group work. Actual quote: “Now, you can expect to have them work in this group in class, but it is unlikely that this group will continue out of class.”

•Oh, but what happens to a teacher’s role when collaborative learning is taking place? Again, actual quote: “You must learn as a teacher to move from, the sage on the stage, to the guide on the side.” Snappy!

•Next lesson: How to select group members. According to a three-page handout that took 15 minutes to get through, teachers can point at four students and say, “You four are in a group.” This process can be repeated until all students are in groups. It was at this point that I noticed my left ear was bleeding.

•We spent the next 30 minutes analyzing a Peanuts cartoon. The gist: Rerun and Sally are drawing in class. Sally looks at what Rerun has drawn, and informs him “We’re supposed to be drawing flowers!” Rerun then proudly explains that he found the assignment too limiting, and instead created an elaborate and imaginative series of comic book like illustrations. However, after showing these creative drawings to his teacher, Rerun sullenly returns to his desk and says, “Teacher says we’re drawing flowers today.” Ho-ho!

We were placed into our own groups (if confused about how you put people into groups, please see the 3 page handout entitled, “The Most Unnecessary Thing That Needs Fucking Explaining”) and then we are told to analyze the lesson learned in the Peanuts comic. Our starting question: What do you think the teacher was thinking when Rerun showed her his off-assignment drawing, and do you agree with her assessment? I suggested that the teacher was thinking what all teachers think when students don’t do what you have asked them to do, which is, “I don’t get paid enough for this shit.” I said that if indeed the teacher was thinking this, then I agreed with her. The other members in my group felt that Rerun should have been encouraged to explore his creativity, and that the teacher should not stifle students by relying on traditional, old-fashioned teaching methods. The rest of the class also came to this conclusion. There was one other adjunct who was the exception to this, but I’ll talk about him later.

•As we were lectured about the difference between communicating and meta-communicating (spoilers: one means “to share or exchange information” and the other is just bullshit jingoism) a thought occurred to me: just how much was this seminar costing the school? I was being paid $100 to be there, as was every other adjunct instructor there. I counted heads, and found there to be 19 people present. That’s $1,900 right there. I don’t know what the professor leading the seminar was getting paid, but I’d imagine that she wasn’t working for free. I would guess she was getting at least $500, maybe more. At that district, I get paid about $2,500 gross per 4-unit class, per semester that I teach. I think it is safe to say that if this collaborative learning seminar had been canceled, then the money could have been used to give one of us adjuncts an extra class to teach.

Budget cuts caused a record number of class cuts this semester, and more are expected just over the horizon. A lot of students were unable to take the classes that they needed due to these cuts. This seminar was also one of five total that was being offered for adjuncts over a two-month period. Now, while not all of them may be as useless as this one (we’ll find out, I registered for all five), I think that it would have been in everyone’s best interest to just add 5 extra classes to the schedule, much to the adjunct’s and student’s benefit.

•We get to do Parrot Partners! Yay! We are teamed up in pairs and we each tell our partner our opinion on a subject, in this case the effectiveness of collaborative learning. Our partner must then repeat the essence of what we have told them back to us, using their own words but not adding or taking away any details. This goes on for about 25 minutes before the professor leading the seminar has to call an end to this activity. Time is running out and we have to move on. My partner had only just begun telling me why I thought traditional lectures and tests were far superior to this style of collaborative learning.

•We learn the Wall-Line game. Another time-eating exercise we don’t finish. We are asked our opinion of a subject, and all form a line with those that “Strongly Agree” at one end, and those that “Strongly Disagree” at the other. The idea is that we must explain our positions to each other in order to agree upon a ranking. In other words, if two or three people all think they should be at the very end of Strongly Agree, then they must work out who really agrees more strongly than the others by explaining their position. The prompt we were given was, “Collaborative Learning is the best teaching method.” While most of the other teachers bumbled around at the Strongly Agree end, I walked confidently to the opposite side at Strongly Disagree, and twiddled my thumbs until someone who had been deemed not to agree as strongly as the others was forced down towards me and had to explain themselves. Time was called before they could finish talking about how great group work such as this was, and without me being able to express my opinion at all.

•I realized that the focus of almost all these group exercises was to teach the students how to interact with one another. The goals of these group activities were always to encourage better social behavior, and never (as far as I could tell) to teach information or skills specific to a class. In other words, there were no applications of The Name Game, The Peanuts Cartoon, The Wall-Line, The Parrot Partners, or The Scavenger Hunt (see next) beyond social exercises. A Physical Anthropology class couldn’t teach a chapter from its textbook using The Wall-Line.

•The final hour of the seminar was spent breaking us into groups and having us do a building-wide scavenger hunt. We were given clues as to where to look within the building for various forms of information (when the building was made, what purpose it was intended for, etc) and we needed to first find our own specific information, and then exchange that information with the other groups. This activity was a colossal fail. Forgiving the fact that it was more of a sixth grade activity than one for the college classroom, it gobbled up the entire hour, everyone in my group (college professors, remember) bitched and moaned about it, and at the end no one had successfully gathered all the necessary information. We ended up aborting it, and being told, “You get the general idea.”

•Each of us is given one portrait of Mr. Benjamin Franklin.

To be continued…

As many of you know, the Rev. Gene Robinson, the openly Gay Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire, gave the opening prayer at yesterday’s Lincoln Memorial event. It was the first event in the inaugural festivities this year. HBO, which had paid for exclusive rights to the event chose not to broadcast Bishop Robinson’s prayer. So if you watched there, then you wouldn’t have caught it or even known that it occurred. NPR didn’t air it either. There’s no record of it in images placed on the sites of Getty Images, New York Times and the Washington Post.

It’s a complete erasure of his ever having delivered the prayer.

Such is the continuing policy of silence and erasure we have to live with from people who should know better. We are used to this. If you know your Gay history, or your Black history, or any of our real American history then you know of this type of erasure. This has happened again and again. It is important that we recover the truth in our collective American history, and celebrate it.

So I’d like to help recover it by providing here the full text of Bishop Robinson’s prayer.

Opening Inaugural Event
Lincoln Memorial, Washington, DC
January 18, 2009

Delivered by the Right Reverend V. Gene Robinson:

“Welcome to Washington! The fun is about to begin, but first, please join me in pausing for a moment, to ask God’s blessing upon our nation and our next president.

O God of our many understandings, we pray that you will

Bless us with tears for a world in which over a billion people exist on less than a dollar a day, where young women from many lands are beaten and raped for wanting an education, and thousands die daily from malnutrition, malaria, and AIDS.

Bless us with anger at discrimination, at home and abroad, against refugees and immigrants, women, people of color, gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

Bless us with discomfort at the easy, simplistic “answers” we’ve preferred to hear from our politicians, instead of the truth, about ourselves and the world, which we need to face if we are going to rise to the challenges of the future.

Bless us with patience and the knowledge that none of what ails us will be “fixed” anytime soon, and the understanding that our new president is a human being, not a messiah.

Bless us with humility open to understanding that our own needs must always be balanced with those of the world.

Bless us with freedom from mere tolerance replacing it with a genuine respect and warm embrace of our differences, and an understanding that in our diversity, we are stronger.

Bless us with compassion and generosity remembering that every religion ’s God judges us by the way we care for the most vulnerable in the human community, whether across town or across the world.

And God, we give you thanks for your child Barack, as he assumes the office of President of the United States.

Give him wisdom beyond his years, and inspire him with Lincoln’s reconciling leadership style, President Kennedy’s ability to enlist our best efforts, and Dr. King’s dream of a nation for ALL the people.

Give him a quiet heart, for our Ship of State needs a steady, calm captain in these times.

Give him stirring words, for we will need to be inspired and motivated to make the personal and common sacrifices necessary to facing the challenges ahead.

Make him color-blind, reminding him of his own words that under his leadership, there will be neither red nor blue states, but the United States.

Help him remember his own oppression as a minority, drawing on that experience of discrimination, that he might seek to change the lives of those who are still its victims.

Give him the strength to find family time and privacy, and help him remember that even though he is president, a father only gets one shot at his daughters’ childhoods.

And please, God, keep him safe. We know we ask too much of our presidents, and we’re asking FAR too much of this one. We know the risk he and his wife are taking for all of us, and we implore you, O good and great God, to keep him safe. Hold him in the palm of your hand that he might do the work we have called him to do, that he might find joy in this impossible calling, and that in the end, he might lead us as a nation to a place of integrity, prosperity and peace.

AMEN.”

Jonathan Reed won second place in AARP’s U@50 video contest launched in 2007. Contestants were asked to create 2-minute video describing their vision of the future; what life would be like by the time they turned 50.

Here is the text. Read it and then read it again in reverse.

Lost Generation by Jonathan Reed

I am part of a lost generation
and I refuse to believe that
I can change the world
I realize this may be a shock but
“Happiness comes from within.”
is a lie, and
“Money will make me happy.”
So in 30 years I will tell my children
they are not the most important thing in my life
My employer will know that
I have my priorities straight because
work
is more important than
family
I tell you this
Once upon a time
Families stayed together
but this will not be true in my era
This is a quick fix society
Experts tell me
30 years from now, I will be celebrating the 10th anniversary of my divorce
I do not concede that
I will live in a country of my own making
In the future
Environmental destruction will be the norm
No longer can it be said that
My peers and I care about this earth
It will be evident that
My generation is apathetic and lethargic
It is foolish to presume that
There is hope.

And all of this will come true unless we choose to reverse it .

I would like to call a ceasefire in the Spin War.

It is a destructive war that will have no winner. Everyone suffers, our people and theirs. Let us move beyond this Spin War and into a new era, Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, Greens and Libertarians, the faithful and the non-believers. Let us put aside the Spin, and replace it with respectful discussion, and productive debate. Let us not seek the power of our party, nor the destruction of our opposing party, but instead try and find what answers shall truly elevate this nation and its peoples.

One of the stories that I require my students to read and analyze is “Brownies” by ZZ Packer. It is the story of an all-black Brownie Scout troop that goes off to camp and finds there is an all-white Brownie Scout troop there as well. The Brownies instantly want to kick the asses of each and every white girl in Troop 909, and they soon have an excuse when Arnetta hears one of the Troop 909 girls use the word nigger. The Brownies confront some of the Troop 909 girls in the bathroom, intending to beat the snot out of them, but discover that the Troop 909 girls aren’t just white, they’re developmentally disabled.

The story is not so much about racism as it is about children acting out the same hatreds of their parents, often without cause or reason. After the discovery that Troop 909 is developmentally disabled, we learn from their counselor that many of the girls are echolalic, which means they repeat what they hear without knowing what they are saying. If they did say the n-word, it was just an echo of what they may have heard from their parents, and this becomes a very clear parallel to the Brownies looking for a reason to beat up Troop 909 because of their race, an echo from their own parents.

It is a great story for analysis and discussion, and I always enjoy bringing it into class.

Last week, however, things didn’t go too smoothly.

I have two students, let’s call them Beverly and Tom. Both happen to be the only black students in my class. During discussion, Tom said something along the lines of, “I found myself questioning whether Arnetta is a reliable witness. Later, she couldn’t identify the girl who called them niggers, and I just feel she probably made it all up in order to start trouble.

Beverly, who was sitting two seats down from him, recoiled visibly when he said nigger, and before he had finished his sentence she demanded, “Will you please not use that word!”

Let me also take a moment to point out that these are, without doubt, the top two students in this class. At this moment, I remembered a very well written paper Beverly had turned in at the start of the semester about how she did not think anyone, including African-Americans, should use the n-word. Now she was voicing that belief in class.

“I think the important thing to remember,” I said carefully, uneasy with the subject, “is that Tom was using…that word…in analysis of the story. He didn’t say it at, or about anyone, and there was no intent to offend. Let’s focus on intent, and the fact that this is a respectful discussion among scholars.”

“Yeah,” Tom said. “And I’m black.”

At this, Beverly visibly scoffed (this may be because Tom is much lighter skinned than Beverly), and Tom immediately took offense to this reaction. Trouble was brewing, and I decided to chicken out instead of going with my gut.

“I don’t think it is unreasonable,” I said, mostly to Tom, “for her to ask that we simply refer to…that word…as racial slur, racial epitaph, or just the n-word.”

Tom didn’t like this, and I didn’t blame him. It was the chicken-shit approach, and I was coddling Beverly unnecessarily.

“Well, then!” Tom continued, clearly annoyed. “What I was saying is that I think Arnetta might have been acting like, oh you…a total b-word.” He sarcastically acted like he should not even have said b-word, and it struck home for me how ridiculous it was for me to ask him to refrain from referring to a word that had appeared in the story I had assigned.

Tom is indeed an excellent student, and he had been hanging out with me before and after class, drilling me with questions about being a college professor, because he was very interested in teaching math after he graduated. I felt as though I had let him down. Actually, I felt that I’d let them both down. The whole class, in fact.

In my syllabus, for every class I teach, even introduction to grammar, there is a section that reads:

Also, please be notified that some students may deem some class content objectionable. It is not the instructor’s intention to offend, but to challenge students to analyze and interpret new ideas and concepts.

This was given to me during my time at the University of Arizona. My mentor had told me that students needed to be challenged, and they needed to be uncomfortable. The ultimate point of learning is to go outside ourselves, find something new; force ourselves to leave our safe boxes and be challenged by the world around us. I’ve required devout Catholics to write persuasive arguments in favor of legalized abortion, forced fierce liberals to rhetorically analyze Rush Limbaugh without passing any form of personal judgment, made countless conservatives and moralistic persons read stories about rape and suicide, not to mention the recreational drug use of a character named Fuckhead. I should have forced Beverly to hear the word nigger, not hurled at her or anyone else, but just spoken of in analysis of a story about how racism is passed from parent to child without anyone even noticing.

The worst part is that if Tom and Beverly hadn’t been black then I could have done it, no problem. The fact that I was white, that they were of color, all the history and hate and things associated with that word, intimidated me. I couldn’t stand there and tell a young, highly intelligent black woman that she had to sit and deal with this guy using the word nigger.

And if the situation were to ever repeat itself, I don’t think I’ll be capable of doing anything differently.