But, say you have been lucky enough to be assigned some courses to teach. Congratulations! Now, how can you have a successful, productive teaching experience without totally missing out on the summer season? The Freeway flyer, who has not taken a summer off since 2005, has some pointers.

• Purchase an extra long extension cord. Use this to power your lap top computer so that you can take it onto your patio or deck. A table with umbrella will make a nice desk for you. You needn’t slave away inside; papers can be graded outdoors almost as well as indoors. Perhaps, even better.
• Take advantage of the longer daylight hours. You can weed a flower bed at nine o’clock at night, or take a late walk with your dog. You are not bound by short daylight hours; you have more flexibility.
• Keep some comfortable sandals in the car for driving. You can pop on the closed toe, professional-looking shoes when you get to campus.
• Follow the European’s lead and learn to value “mini breaks.” If you are teaching Monday through Thursday, you can leave right from school Thursday night and drive to some place wonderful. For example, I am often fortunate enough to be invited to my sister’s lake cabin during the summer. A three or four day stay at the lake is great for relaxing; when I return, I am fresh and ready to teach.
• Try to squeeze in some traditional summer fun, such as summer reading. Some light “beach” books can be good recreation, something you can pick up and read a chapter at a time.
• Plant lots of perennials, the type of plants that need little attention after they are established. You can enjoy the beauty with less work. Then, when you look up from those papers at your outdoor desk, you’ll have something lovely upon which to gaze.
• You can use some time to get a head start on planning for fall semester; for example, if the school is adapting a new textbook, you can read it and become familiar with it. Or not, after all, you are already working hard and should be kind to yourself.
• Some of your friends and relatives are fortunate enough to have the summer off, and may be able to come visit you. They have more time than you do right now, so let them make an effort.
• If you have children who are home for the summer, be sure to set aside time for traditional summer activities. Plan some day trips to the beach or a nice, cool museum. With older children, now is a good time to let them demonstrate that they are able to help out and share responsibility around the house. This is also a good time for them to practice cooking and baking; it’s fun for them and everyone gets real food to eat. Good things can come to those who sort laundry and wash dishes.

Henry James said that the words “summer afternoon” were the two “most beautiful words in the English language.” If you play your cards right, you can have those summer afternoons, evenings, and mornings, too.

Have a great summer.

Perhaps, you would like to participate in an online seminar or course. A web site called Adjunctopia has many training opportunities http://www.adjunctopia.com/training/ Offerings in the near future have such titles as “Approaches to Managing Communications Effectively in an Online course” and “Creating a Syllabus and Beyond,” with prices ranging from $45 to $99.

As a freeway flyer, you may have access to professional development offered through your different colleges. During the school year, you might have been too busy to pay much attention to this, let alone actually attend the classes or workshops, but you might have an easier schedule now. I have been tempted this week by some upcoming software classes in Dreamweaver and Moodle. There is a workshop called “Becoming a Champion of Change;” I don’t know exactly what that means in this case, but it sounds intriguing! Also, a couple of the colleges have fitness classes. This might be my chance, finally, to learn how to “Zumba.” Another college has everything from “Twitter Basics” to “Sexual Harassment Awareness Training.” If I have Saturdays free, I can attend classes at yet another college on “The Adult Learner,” “Active Teaching,” or “Plagiarism.” The nice part about using the facilities and opportunities offered by the schools at which you teach is that the price is usually right: free. Free is good, especially is you are in the process of paying for and squeezing in an occasional graduate course toward that terminal degree. Those classes are not cheap.

And, speaking of cheap, be wary of spending a lot on money on teaching manuals and seminars about which you know nothing other than what you have read online. You owe it to yourself (and your wallet) to check into them before you lay out that very hard earned cash.

Lastly, there are some excellent programs sponsored by colleges other than the ones where you are employed. Honolulu Community College has a list in their “Teaching Tips Index” that has dozens of interesting links: http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/teachtip.htm It is a delight. Then, there is Lower Columbia College with another impressive list called “Tips to Improve Your Teaching: http://lowercolumbia.edu/internal/faculty-resources/professional-development/tips_to_improve.htm This seems to demonstrate that there is a multitude of riches available for anyone with the desire to improve. It’s all there for you; you just need to take the time to check it out.

Offices are important. An office is the college instructor’s home away from home; in fact, the instructor often spends more time at the office than at home. Offices can indicate the status of the owner, in terms of size, location, windows, and amenities. The adjunct faculty dream office has windows which open onto a calming, attractive view. There is a desk large enough to spread out the papers, materials, and books for one entire class at a time. The office is well-lit and the temperature is neither too warm nor too chilly. There are shelves and file cabinets for storage, and a bulletin board for posting important notices. There is a door which locks and keeps the instructor’s belongings safe. Someone empties the garbage and recycling bins on a regular basis and the office itself is clean looking and fresh smelling. There is a speedy computer with internet access, the latest software, a printer, and a phone for use. The room itself is large enough to meet with a small group of students or with other faculty members.

I have not seen this office; bu remember, this is the adjunct faculty dream office. As the Freeway Flyer, I have had or have shared quite a few offices. All of them have had some of the features listed here; none of them have had everything. Most of them have been memorable in one way or another:

1. My office at a large state university was a modular cubicle which had six foot walls but no door. The cubicle opened onto a hallway which was open during the day. There was a phone and a computer hook-up for a lap top computer. It was fine for my office hours and for general purposes, but when I left at night, I had to put everything into locked cabinets, including the phone.
2. My office at a private university consists of a slot for mail and a file cabinet drawer. There is a computer in the room which is shared by aa part-time faculty, and a few desks which are claimed by the regular adjuncts, those who teach there each semester.
3. At a community college, the adjunct office is a nine foot by ten foot room with no windows. It is taken up by a large mail box system and two desks. There is no phone or computer. It does have a large shelving system packed with supplies, saving the instructor the problem of tracking down file folders or dry erase markers.
4. At another community college, I share a medium office with nine other instructors. There are four desks and two computers. So far this semester, I have shared this office with no more than two other instructors at once. If we all showed up at the same time, it would be comical. This is an interior office so it has no windows, but there is a door which locks.
5. Another, larger community college where I teach has, appropriately, a very large adjunct faculty office. This office has multiple telephones, file cabinets which are claimed a drawer at a time by instructors, several computers, and some tables and chairs in the middle with which to meet students and others. This office does feel spacious and although it is an interior office, there are windows which open onto the floor’s hallways. The only slight drawback this office has is that there are no printers to go with the computers, mainly in an effort to restrict the amount of printing that goes on in an effort to control costs.

Offices are not the most important things; they are certainly not as important as salary, job security, or even respect, but they are a concern. Recently, the Saint Francis College adjunct faculty voted for an adjunct faculty union for access to health care, regular pay increases, and “other benefits that full-time colleagues enjoy, including office and storage space.” http://www.aftface.org/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=652 Adjunct faculty are not greedy; they are not driven by status, they would just like to be able to comfortably do their work and to know that if they leave something at the office, it will be there when they return. This seems reasonable, doesn’t it?

Then, a month ago, the phone rang. It was someone at the main campus of a university for whom I have been an adjunct for over seven years. This is the college where I began teaching at post-secondary level, where I got my start as a freeway flyer. The woman on the other end of the phone reminded me that the investiture of the new university president was being scheduled and that there would be a ceremony marking the occasion. She said that all full-time faculty members and some adjuncts who had been with the college a number of years, like me, were being invited as well. We were not only being asked to attend, the plan was for us to dress in full academic regalia and march in as part of the ceremony.

Already, I was formulating my refusal in my mind; it was going to be full of regret and it would be a good one. However, then she began to butter me up. She told me she was one of the people who regularly reviewed my course evaluations and that she knew how my students valued me and that I was important to the university. By this time, you might guess, my resolve to decline was fading fast. Before I knew it, I was telling her that I was in Grand Rapids, the city where the ceremony would be held, on Wednesdays anyway, and that it would be a simple matter to just go earlier that day. I said I would attend.

The day of the investiture, I left early and traveled to the large Grand Rapids campus. The university, it appeared, was going all out for this occasion, as evidenced by the large numbers of people all over the campus and the friendly event planners on every corner. I saw people travelling in small groups and everyone seemd excited and happy to be there. For a moment, I felt a bit of the isolated feeling that creeps in every now and then as a part-time instructor. Sometimes, I compare freeway flyers to modern day “Zorros.” Who was that masked man/woman? We come, we teach and conquer, and we go.

After an informal luncheon, I made my way to the dressing area where there were people who were experts at dressing others and making sure their hoods and everything hung correctly. I was pleased to see that there were a half dozen people I knew fairy well and I even received some hugs hello. By the time the procession began, I was feeling pretty positive about the experience. I marched behind a woman who had interviewed me for my first adjunct position; behind me, was a man, another instructor, I had also known as a friend for some time.

I sat in the third row of the filled autorium and listened to two state representatives and several businessmen from the area speak of hope and promise for education. A student made a speech about how excited he was to be at the university and how much he looked forward to the future. Then, I listened to the new university president speak. He was energetic and focused. He was excited about the possibilities of higher education and the future of the university. And, somewhere between the talk of strategic planning and the bold, new vision, I began to feel a part of things. It is nice to be reminded why you do what you do, and more so, why you love it. I took that feeling with me when I left that day, and I even carried it into my night class.

So, maybe, I will try not to be too quick to come up with an automatic answer of “no” the next time an opportunity presents itself. The rest of you Zorros out there might keep this in mind, too: sometimes we need to say “yes.”

In some ways, this show is much like other shows about academic life on television and in movies. From “Welcome Back Kotter” and “The Paper Chase” in the Seventies, to present day renditions, they all seem to have a lot in common. Classes are very short in length, very small in number of students, and all the characters are very clever. The instructors have large offices, teach very few classes, if they have more than one, and they have total free rein.

NBC’s “Community” has a few other characteristics I have noticed. For example, each week there is a show about a particular group of students beginning a new class together. This college has the shortest semesters of any college I have known. Another aspect of the show is that the students are constantly thrown together, whether it is classes they attend together, study groups, or the many meals and breaks they share. Is this what happens in real life? No. In some university settings, students are often with their dorm mates, and they may have multiple classes with students who share their majors and programs. In most community colleges, people travel to school, attend their classes, and then they travel home. In “Community,” the TV show, it seems those people are always at the college. One wonders if they do have homes.

These are all of the things that were going through my mind when I watched the show recently. Mildly to moderately amusing, but it was nothing like real life. Except, upon further reflection, I began to consider some of the things that have been happening in real-life community colleges lately. Consider the record breaking (327 pounds before cooking) meatball cooked by Glen Oaks Community College in Centreville, Michigan this month. It had to be moved by forklift because of its size, and 250 pounds of it were donated to Meals on Wheels with the rest being distributed as meatball sandwiches to spectators. Glen Oaks is a small school in Michigan’s St. Joseph County, but now they have appeared in national newspapers, television news, and The Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/03/24/worlds-largest-meatball-d_n_511643.html

This week, Kalamazoo Valley Community College is sponsoring its seventh annual diversity conference. One of the attractions the students are encouraged to attend is the Human Race Machine, which lets them view themselves as six different races. Students lined up for this event. Then, there is another college, Lake Michigan College which recently banned people convicted of sex crimes against children and those listed on Michigan’s sex offender registry from attending classes on its four campuses. This also resulted in the suspension of three current students who can now only take online courses. http://detnews.com/article/20100304/SCHOOLS/3040414/Lake-Michigan-College-bans-child-sex-crime-offenders

These stories are from three colleges in Southwestern Michigan, and all have happened within the last month. With over 1,200 community colleges in the United States, think of all the interesting activities and programs available for students. And, although Time Magazine and others have pronounced that community colleges are “deeply unsexy,” http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1909623,00.html there is still a lot going on. They may not have Joel McHale and Chevy Chase, but they have a lot to offer, not even counting giant meatballs.

• You overhear someone. I heard a student describe a conversation with another student who took the same class with a different instructor. He evidently had commented on some of the assignments being done in this class. “He said they didn’t have to do a lot of these assignments. I told him that’s why they say this instructor’s so good.” This came at the end of a very long day which made it even nicer to hear.
• Your student evaluations are good. For example, if my numbers are consistently as good or better than the course mean, i.e., my numbers compared to everyone else’s who teach the same class, I know I am doing well.
• You get good “word of mouth.” Students advise their friends to sign up for your sections. I figured this out one year when it seemed I was getting a disproportionately large number of hockey players in my classes.
• You get repeat customers. Students who begin with your remedial class sign up for sections of your subsequent classes. They say, “I was dreading this class, but I knew you would get me through it.”
• They remember you after the fact. You might get an email one or more semesters later, asking you how you are doing or thanking you for the class.
• Your work becomes part of the course. Some assignments you developed are put onto a drive accessible to other instructors who will teach the course. By the way, remember to add these to your personal portfolio.
• You witness success stories. I’m thinking of a student who dreaded taking the required composition class so much, he waited to take it until the last semester before he was to graduate. That semester he was surprised to discover he liked the weekly journal writing and the essay writing; in fact, an essay of his received an honorable mention in the college’s annual essay contest.

These small instances of success may not translate to increased income or even accolades (at least not immediately), but they can increase personal satisfaction. You are good at what you do and what you do matters. Realizing this is the beginning of receiving the respect you are due and will help you to continue to teach with the confidence you should have.

Leave a comment and tell me of some of your “small successes.” I would welcome hearing about them.

This semester I have a personal home account, Group Wise accounts from three different colleges, and a separate email account from a fourth college. I check these email accounts daily during the week and at least once over the weekend to read and write emails for students, administrators and others. I easily spend over an hour a day in email land. As a good faculty member, I must respond quickly to emails from department chairs or deans. As a good instructor, I need to answer emails from students in as timely a manner as possible. At the beginning of the semester, I tell students I will try to get back to them with an answer the same day; If I receive their emails later in the day, they can expect an answer the next day.

Evidently, we have trained students to expect answers within 12 hours, because that’s when I receive emails from students checking on earlier messages. That’s another reason I try to respond quickly — to keep the in-box from becoming cluttered. Students are not concerned that Freeway Flyers have multiple school accounts to keep track of; their questions are as important to them (if not more so) as anyone else’s.

With all of this important communication going on, it is worthwhile to find ways to streamline and expedite the process. Here are some ways to make your life easier and keep everyone happy.

• Have all of the individual accounts forwarded automatically to one home or other main account. You will be able to read them all at once and still be able to answer them from the individual accounts. You can set this up yourself, or your network manager at school can assist you as well.
• Use Microsoft Outlook to configure multiple accounts. There are many other programs available as well, including Pegasus or Mozilla’s Thunderbird. Most are free.
• Send mass emails to students. Often, you can download a student email list from the roster section of the school web site.
•  Use Blackboard or Moodle to post messages and answer questions. It will save you time from weeding through emails looking for ones that are related to a particular class.
• Get high speed internet at home if you have already not done so. Where cable internet is unavailable, check into satellite. It will be worth it to you.
• Make sure your SPAM filters are set correctly for all of your accounts. A lot of emails are a waste of time and do not even need to reach you. It will save you the trouble of moving them to the delete folder.

The joys of technology are only joys if they improve your effectiveness and make your life easier. The time it takes to put these changes into effect can definintely be worth your while in the long run.

Dependence on one college for income as a part-timer can be a tough way to make a living. Obviously, higher education has been facing,  and will continue facing, challenges in terms of funding and enrollment—at least in the near future. This affects everyone, of course. For example, a part-time instructor always has to worry about a class filling, because if it does not, there may not be another class offered to him or her. Also, part-time instructors will be the first ones to be “bumped” if a full-time instructor with a contract needs another course.

Here’s where the Freeway Flyer needn’t worry: if a class does not work out for an instructor at College A, there may be a class at College B or C that might work out. Keep in contact with department chairs or administrative deans and let them know you are interested in hearing about other classes or sections that might become available. In some cases, this might result in being assigned a class at the last minute, but the flexibility this requires is one of your strong suits. Also, being able to take over a class with very little notice demonstrates that you are the go-to adjunct, the one on whom they can depend.

Having a friendly working relationship with a department chair or dean can be helpful in other ways. For instance, if I am bumped from a class at one of my colleges, my department chair at this school always gives me first pick of classes for the next semester, or will even offer me an extra class.

Of course, this means that your schedule might change drastically from semester-to-semester, as might the particular classes you will be teaching. One semester, you might think you are working second shift because you have so many night classes. Another semester, you might only have to teach two days a week, but both of those days start at nine in the morning and finish at nine in the evening. But, this is also part of the fun of being an adjunct at multiple colleges: every semester is different and it never gets old. That is okay with you, though. If you wanted a 40 hour a week job with the same schedule every week, you would not have gone into teaching in higher education.

There are a multitude of things that can go wrong in any given day. Some of them are beyond our control, and some are not. For example, there can be problems with technology. If GroupWise is “down,” you may be inconvenienced, but that is outside your control. If you leave your pen drive at home with the documents you need for a class, that was within your control and now you’re stuck.

Then, there are all the opportunities for something to go wrong on the road to school. Frequent Flyers, by definition, spend a lot of time traveling from college to college. In my experience, at least once a week there is a highway accident big enough to stop traffic. The accident is outside your control (at least, let’s hope so), but leaving early enough to give yourself extra time if there is such an occurrence, was within your control.

Frequent Flyers are at certain campuses infrequently, perhaps only once or twice a week, and possibly at night. They may be the last to know when something is changed. For instance, I recently checked a library web page on the college web site to make sure they were open until 8:00. When the class and I got there, though, the sign on the door said they were closing at 6:30 each day instead. I couldn’t control the hours, of course, but I could take time to read signs.

It’s probably a good idea to point out here that although you are super organized, highly intelligent, and darned cute, you are still not perfect and will forget things or make the occasional silly mistake. To demonstrate, I will confide in you and tell you a guilty-secret mistake I made once. It was very simple; I put on brown sandals and left for class. No big deal, right? It only became a big deal when I got to campus and upon emerging from my car, noticed that I was indeed wearing two brown sandals, but they were from different pairs. Yes, it was embarrassing (please don’t tell anyone). And yes, obviously, wearing matching shoes was within my control.

My point is that while we do not have control over so many possible occurrences of day to day teaching life, there are things we can do:

1. Don’t  be caught without an important document of part of a lesson. Follow your own advice that you often share with your students: save documents to your hard drive, your pen drive, and email them to yourself so you can access them anywhere. Remember, too, that pen drives do not last forever; they have a finite number of “fires.”
2. Know alternate routes to all of your schools. Then, if you must exit the freeway, you can still find your way. Also, keeping county maps in the car for all of the counties in which you drive could be useful.
3. Web sites are great, but they are not always up to date. Consult the site, but be smart and notice signs on doors, and send an email to check on what you need to know in advance.
4. This one you already know: before you leave the house, verify that you have your wallet/purse/keys/school bag and so on. My last piece of advice is to look down and make sure your shoes match. Seriously, where do you think they got the idea that there are such things as absent minded professors? There are real life stories everywhere.

Fortunately, there is a technique that can work in many cases to help you deal with frustration. With practice (and it takes practice), you can de-stress your life and impress your peers. Attempt to look for the humor in a situation and appreciate it. Almost any state of affairs has something funny about it; challenge yourself to find it. Emily Dickinson’s dear friend, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, said “There is no defense against adverse fortune which is so effectual as an habitual sense of humor.” Make it a habit to look for the amusing aspects of a situation.

In the Seventies, I had a crush on the Mash television show character, Hawkeye Pierce. It was not only Alan Alda’s good looks; it was his knack at finding something funny in every situation. It occurred to the young me that humor gave one a sense of self-control. Also, if you can throw out one-liners, you may not come across as vulnerable as you feel. Humor is right up there with spring breaks as a way to stay sane and keep from hurting yourself. Comedian Bill Cosby says, “If you can find humor in anything, you can survive it.” Finding the humor may just take practice.

Now that you’re a comic genius, you can share the humor with your classes. After all, studies have shown that students shown cartoons and jokes related to the concepts taught received higher scores on multiple choice exams than students who were not taught with humor (Ziv, 1988). For fun, check out “Fifty fun things for professors to do on the first day of class” http://www.ahajokes.com/profun.html and then don’t actually do most of them. But, reading about them will give you a laugh.

Of course, this doesn’t work for everyone and humor should only be used by instructors who are comfortable doing so and are good at it. Avoid the use of sarcasm: it can have a negative effect. Be careful, too; there have been times in the past when I have been accused of being sarcastic when I thought I was only being exceedingly clever. Humor, like most things, is in the eye of the beholder. Know your audience; in fact, what’s sauce for the goose at one college isn’t necessarily sauce for the gander at another. Once I received a humorous email at College A, which got a major laugh at College B, but received dead silence at College C. Different reaction, different day.

Share the joy if you like, but remember that laughter is good for your own mental health. Try to find the humor in day to day situations and see if your stress level goes lower as a result. Also, try to end your days with a laugh. There is a good reason to watch late night television. For example, tune in and watch David Letterman’s nightly Top Ten List. If you can’t stay up that late, check out the web archives. http://www.cbs.com/late_night_show/top_ten Or, have fun keeping your spouse awake while you are busy laughing at a Janet Evanovich novel. And, finally, try not to take it all too seriously; after all, today’s fiasco will be forgotten tomorrow and you will have new challenges to put into perspective.

Ziv, A. Teaching and Learning with Humor: Experiment and Replication. Journal of Experimental Education, 57, 1988.