Have Field Log: Will Travel

by Jo Gibson IT WASN'T UNTIL recently, as I neared the end of my twenty-year-plus career as an editor and writer, that I embarked on my second, part-time, edging-my-way-into-retirement career as an instructor in the freshman composition program at Cleveland State University. New to this business of being an adjunct faculty member, I soon became aware of some of the unique properties of the position, noting the tension inherent in the paradox of relishing the autonomy that comes with the job (in spades!) and striving to come to feel a part of a larger collegial community. As with any new endeavor, there was a shakedown period. I enjoyed the well-designed day of orientation spent in the company of my fellow adjunct members, and the comprehensive 100-page Freshman English Faculty Handbook, which had not just solid general information, but also "Tips for Teaching Effectiveness," "Tips on Assignments," and a half-dozen essays written by instructors for their fellow teachers on subjects like peer review and portfolio exchanges. In addition to designing the orientation session and handbook, Dr. Earl Anderson, chair of the English Department, and Dr. Jeffrey Ford, director of composition, had also arranged for office space dedicated to adjuncts. In the first few weeks, the value of our dedicated shared office space became apparent. Those of us who shared the space began to feel like colleagues. It was good to get to know Virginia, and learn about her lute playing and interest in Renaissance music, and Barbara and her love of science fiction and Japanese animé. In my time in the corporate world as a writer and project manager, I had come to know the value of these casual, friendly relationships. Informal conversations transmute into informal, but vitally important, problem-solving sessions. In just such a way, Susan, who had already had a successful first career as an English teacher at an exclusive all-female high school, gave me pedagogical hints. For instance, when I mentioned in passing that some students had trouble reading aloud from the text, she said, "Oh, I always defuse that situation! Sometimes the students are just nervous, so I tell them ahead of time it's like sight-reading music. It'll give some people trouble at first." With Kelley, I had some fine early-morning têtes-à-tête, too. Before class, we'd share a favorite poem or a segment of some good student essay we were grading. This shared enjoyment of English literature seemed to propel each of us once again into our classrooms, and we'd take our renewed passion for the language with us. Yet, in spite of all these positives--orientation, handbook, office space, colleagues--I soon recognized that I was indeed in a new world order. In the main, collegial relationships were at a premium. Many of my fellow adjuncts were seldom around. They checked in for office hours and conferences and then rushed off. An energetic, involved, and enterprising group of individuals, they were, as I learned, cobbling together their living by working a combination of full-time and part-time jobs. Their adjunct assignment was part of that mix. I came to think of us as the Johnny and Joanie Appleseeds of the higher education world. Adjunct faculty travel alone from place to place, knapsacks holding textbooks, rules of grammar, and graded student papers. Most of us take to this life-style; the autonomy suits us. Still, I felt ungrounded. I missed the easy give-and-take of corporate life that I had gotten used to through the regularly scheduled project meetings, team meetings, client interactions, and suchlike. I therefore sought to devise a way to re-create a version of that for myself. Because I like the act of informal writing (I have my own chapbooks to dialogue with others and a personal journal to dialogue with myself), it was an easy move to create a separate journal dedicated to my adjunct-faculty self. I borrowed from methodology I had used in doing some qualitative research. I began thinking of myself as an educational ethnographer, and I created a field log to document my experiences. Thus, I paid close attention to what was going on around me, in the classic "naïve observer" mode, and because I carried my field log (a yellow legal pad) with me at all times, I could de-brief myself on-the-spot by reporting and then reflecting on whatever was germane to my adjunct faculty work. Successes in the classroom were noted; difficulties, too. In addition to these musings, I use the field log to maintain a conversation with rhetoricians, writers, and teachers of composition. I make it a point to be reading something related to the field at any given time, and I take notes on that reading in my field log. In this manner, I can stay in conversation with the likes of Peter Elbow (for process issues) and Robert Johnson or Spencer Kagan (for active learning ideas). Thus, my field log is my portable, personal learning community, and it's always there for me: Does the class seem to be in the mid-semester doldrums? It may help to re-read how I handled the same problem a year ago; or I can refer to the notes I took from Teaching Within the Rhythms of the Semester or a similar text for suggestions. Am I beginning a unit that calls for close textual reading, and do I see that the students need to be primed for it? I can take a look at how I used Adler's How To Read A Book when I was teaching a group of younger students. A brief lecture based on Adler, followed by some ungraded micro-essays based on close textual reading would be a good intervention. Do I just want to talk? Do I need to feel that kick of inspiration, to help me reach higher as a teacher or a writer? Well, that's easy with the field log, for I can use it to write to myself or to re-read and talk back to Parker Palmer, Jane Tompkins, Natalie Goldberg, or bell hooks. Do understand that I relish the autonomy of the open road. Yet, if any adjunct faculty sometimes feels as I do and wants more of the information exchange than is readily available, this tool might work. Whether you elect to use laptop, dog-eared yellow legal pad, or spiral-bound composition book, try making yourself into something of an ethnographer: "Have Field Log, Will Travel."