Freeway Flyer

• The Top Ten Reasons It Is Great To Be a Freeway Flyer

  No Comments
  29 Jan 2010 /  top ten list
  I am sure there are more than ten good reasons to be a Freeway Flyer, but here are the top ten, David Letterman style.

  10.  Save a fortune on your wardrobe. You can wear the same outfit two days in a row if you go to two different colleges. Professional wardrobes can be expensive, so you can buy a few nice pieces and make them work.

  9.  Save money on taxes. If you itemize your federal return, you are allowed to claim mileage if you have to travel from one college to another to teach in one day. You will need to file IRS Form 1040, Schedule A, and Form 2106.*

  8.  Don’t wait too long between paydays. If you work at multiple colleges, there are likely to be different paydays at each one. You might have a paycheck from somewhere every week.

  7.  Have Fridays off (or Mondays, or Tuesdays). Yes, a day off is necessary to recover from the other five to six days you work. If you teach mornings, afternoons, and evenings, you need a day when you don’t have to go anywhere.

  6.  Skip some boring professional development. “Sorry, I can’t be there that day; I have a class to teach.” Maybe you won’t mind missing certain PD days at a college (after all, how many times can you sit through training for the habits of highly effective instructors?).

  5.  Have more opportunities for good professional develpment. For example, one college I know has workshops and seminars every week with adjuncts welcome. The topics may be college-specific, teaching theory, or software refreshers. Another college has an annual amount of money avilable for adjuncts to use for professional development to attend conferences and pay annual dues for professional organizations.

  4.  Work out whereever you wish and as many places as you like. Adjuncts usually are able to use the college’s gyms for free. Enjoy circuit training at one college, Zumba at another college, yoga at another.

  3.  All that time to yourself. Okay, it’s time spent in the car driving from college to college to home, but technically, you are alone with your thoughts. You can mentally prepare for a class, plan lessons in your head, or muse about life in general.

  2.  All of the wonderful opportunities to explore the different books, lessons, and other materials different colleges use. You get a chance to review a lot of books and to see a lot of content particular to your field. Free.

  1.  And, the number one reason it is great to be a freeway flyer: You can reuse assignments without worrying about a dual submission problem. Use your best lessons and be a genius without having to recreate the wheel every time!

  *This is my disclaimer: I am not a tax expert; I am merely speaking from personal experience.

  Tags: Carol Weatherford, freeway flyer, top ten list

• How Not to Burn Bridges (Hey, what is that smoky smell?)

  No Comments
  22 Jan 2010 /  employment
  I had planned to write this week about how to avoid burning bridges with colleges if someone has to turn down a class. Then, the phone rang at 8:30 this morning and shortly after, I began to smell smoke.

  First, some background. This semester was going to be my biggest yet in terms of number of schools and number of classes. I would have some new preps, but they were for some classes I looked forward to teaching at some schools where I wanted to teach. I was offered a class at one of the new schools for Fall semester, but when I went to adjunct orientation, I was told I would not be needed that semester after all. This happens sometimes: occasionally a class won’t have enough people sign up and it does not run. Another time, for example, a department chair bumped me from one of my classes because enough students did not register for one of hers and she had a required number of hours to teach.

  Colleges make decisions that are best for the students and for the schools thenselves. I know not to take these things personally. I was pleased, then, when the director told me that I would be on the schedule for the Winter semester. By the middle of Fall semester, he emailed me and said he would put me down for one class and would have another instructor contact me about curriculum and materials.

  By the end of Fall semester, I hadn’t heard anything, so I emailed the director and asked if the class was a go because I wanted to begin preparing to teach it. A week later, I had a reply that the class looked like a go but he was waiting to assign instructors until the full-time faculty made their teaching load.

  Keep in mind that although I love teaching, I do this for a living. My living can vary substantially from semester-to-semester; sometimes I have a full semester, then there are semesters, like last summer, during which I ended up teaching one class and worring about starving. One class falling through can mean the difference between gourmet pasta and macaroni and cheese from a box. I, like a lot of other adjuncts, depend on teaching to support  myself and my family.

  A week later, I still hadn’t heard from the director. I did, however, receive a phone call from another school’s department chair who said they had a scheduling snafu and needed someone to teach a class that started the next day. It was a class I hadn’t had the opportunity to teach before and I was excited about it. I don’t think of myself as superstitious, but maybe it was meant to be! I took the class, whipped up a syllabus and course schedule and made plans to teach the class. I also immediately fired off an email to the director at the other college from whom I had been waiting to hear. I told him I had been offered another class and had accepted it, so he needn’t worry about giving me a class for the upcoming semester. I said perhaps it would work out for another semester and that I would still like to teach for him in the future.

  The phone rang at 8:30 the following morning. The director said he’d received my email and stated he was prepared to offer me the original class. I told him I would be unable to accept it because of the class for which I had just signed a contract. He then asked about my teaching a Wednesday morning class. I had to think for a moment: I was free Wednesday mornings, could I handle another class? I already had three new preps and a full schedule of four colleges in four counties.

  I told him no. I said again I would still like to teach for him, perhaps the next semester. He was noncommittal and, I think, none too pleased. I have this feeling I may not hear from him again and I felt bad all week about how things went. Even when we make concerted efforts to be flexible and acquiescent, things still don’t always work out. Not burning bridges is an excellent goal, but that doesn’t mean it will be simple.

  I will keep my fingers crossed and my guard up for next semester. The juggling game begins again and I must keep working on my communication skills and hoping for the best.

  Tags: Carol Weatherford, employment, teaching, workloads

• Is the Organized Instructor the Effective Instructor? It Helps!

  No Comments
  13 Jan 2010 /  organization, time management
  Organization is important for all college instructors, and is especially important for the Freeway Flyer. There are tricks that you can use that may simplify your professional life and make your personal life more relaxed.

  Color is a wonderful thing – it keeps our world beautiful; it reminds us to watch the sunset and mark another day. It also helps us begin a semester confident that we know where to go and when to be there. For example, use a simple spread sheet which shows hours of the day from 8:00 in the morning till 10:00 at night. Block out the time on the sheet for a particular class, say from 1:00-2:30. In that block, put the college name abbreviation (MSU, GOCC), the name of the class (ENG 110), and the time (1:00-2:30pm). Fill the one and a half hour block with color, perhaps blue. If the class meets twice a week, make the other day’s block and color that one with the same blue. That way, anyone looking at it can tell it’s the same class on a different day.

  Now do the same thing for your other classes. If you have five classes, you will have at least five blocks with colors that are distinct from each other. If you have classes with multiple meetings, you will have even more blocks. When you are finished, print one and put it inside your planner, somewhere you can find it easily. Then, print another one and hang it on your refrigerator or home message center so that others can tell where you are on which day. Your family will thank you. I also, for example, give a copy to my mother and sister. That stops them from worrying about when it’s okay to call me and whether they’ll interrupt me during a class. It’s embarrassing when the instructor’s phone rings during class, especially when the syllabus spells out dire punishments to be handed out when a student’s phone goes off.

  Color can be your friend on a very simple scale, as well. This trick I began using the first time I was to teach at three or more colleges: make a calendar using Microsoft Word. There is a template which shows four months on one 8 ½ by 11 inch sheet. So, page one has January through April, which covers most school’s first semester, page two has May through August (spring and summer) and page three has September through December, the traditional fall semester. Just print out the page needed at the time. Then, find some highlighters: if you are teaching at three different colleges, use three colors you can easily tell apart, say blue, pink, and orange. Use these to mark the days you have classes for a college. If you have a day class at one school on January 19^th, a Tuesday, color in the top half with blue, for example. Then, say there is a night class that same day at another school, for which you have assigned pink: fill the other half of the day in with pink. At the bottom of the calendar, make a key showing the name of the schools with the assigned colors.

  We’re not stopping here with our use of color. Office supply stores (and instructor supply closets) have 8 ½ by 11 inch folders in vivid colors, ones which put the traditional manila folders to shame. If you teach two sections of the same class, say a day section and a night section, use green folders for the day class and blue folders for the night class. At a minimum, you will want one folder to hold class lists and extra syllabus copies, one folder to hold papers to be graded, one folder to hold papers to be returned to the students, one folder for papers that need to be copied, and one folder to hold copies of class assignments. Impress your students with how quickly you can lay your hands on a certain piece of paper.

  Color coding those files also makes it possible to carry materials for more than one class in the same bag. This can sometimes be helpful in terms of reducing the number of items that need to be transported. However, it can be ideal for each class to have its own bag. That way, you can immediately tell apart the English Composition bag from the Technical Writing bag. Also, if you are trying to spare your back, one light bag carried in each hand is better for you than one heavy bag carried on one side.

  One last idea where color and organization may go together: those lovely Post-it notes have multiple uses as well. If it’s not okay to talk to yourself, (and I’m not saying it’s not), it’s certainly okay to write notes to yourself. Keep small packs of Post-its in all of your school bags and use them to write quickie notes. You can also use them just for their different colors (orange means a file that needs to be copied, blue indicates the need to see if a grade was posted for an assignment, yellow means something can be checked off).

  Try incorporating one or more of these techniques and see if it simplifies your days. Any time saved using these methods is time that is available for lesson planning, your own research, or another fun activity.

  Tags: adjuncts, Carol Weatherford, organization, tips

features, news, reviews, cartoon, past issues