The Emotional Hazards of Teaching Part-Time
by Susan Muaddi Darraj
Last week, I walked into my class, ready to deliver the evening’s lesson on the differences between inductive and deductive argumentative essays. I had carefully planned for this evening, and designed an activity I was sure would help cement the students’ understanding of the two styles. The lesson plan had played itself over and over in my head as I’d driven to the community college’s campus in rush-hour traffic, and I was anticipating the class’s reaction to it—despite the long day I’d had at the office at my full-time job.
I swept into the room, saying “hello” and “good evening,” as I quickly settled my books, briefcase, and can of Diet Coke (the nectar of adjunct faculty) on the table at the head of the classroom, throne-like before the backdrop of a gleaming blackboard. It was only when I had opened my book to the lesson on argumentation and had snapped open the tab of my soda can that I actually glanced at my students. What I saw on their faces startled me.
They looked eager.
“What was all this about?” I wondered. Could they have possibly heeded my call during last week’s class to read through the lesson in preparation for tonight’s class? I knew several conscientious students who probably had, but that would not explain the curious looks. More likely, they taken to heart my words that the next assignment, the argumentative essay, would be the most challenging one so far–-more rigorous in its literary demands than either the descriptive or comparison/contrast essays had been. I wondered if, in the fog that had settled over the first few weeks of this required, English composition class, a light had finally been spotted in the distance, promising the shore of student interest and involvement.
“How is everyone doing tonight?” I asked, barely able to mask the enthusiasm in my own voice. “Ready for our new lesson?”
A hand went up in the back of the room, and its owner’s voice asked, “D’you have our papers?”
“Papers?”
“The papers we handed in last week–-the comparing and contrasting ones. You said you’d have ‘em graded and give ‘em back tonight.”
They all faced me like a jury, waiting for the confession.
Of course, I did not have their papers. I mean, I had their papers, sitting neatly in my folder, but they just weren’t graded. In fact, they had sat untouched, neglected during the past week that I had dedicated to preparing the new lesson. I admitted this to them–-I confessed, as their eyes demanded I do–-and twenty faces expressed a unanimous verdict: “Guilty.” My punishment? Their utter disinterest and constant clock-checking during the not-so-brilliant delivery of my brilliant lesson on argumentation.
And why had I neglected to grade their papers? Why had I abandoned those double-spaced, 12-point font masterpieces in my folder like orphans on the stoop of the local convent? I had forgotten about their existence the moment placed them inside my briefcase.
I went home that evening, dejected and dubious about my part-time career.
I rarely have moments like this one, but when I do, I mull over them incessantly. Though I am an adjunct, doomed to an office-less existence on campus, I treat my teaching as if it were a full-time job. I wake up early in the morning, several hours before I need to report to my full-time job (“the one with the benefits,” as my family refers to it), and I grade papers, prepare lesson plans, and generally brainstorm strategies to help my students understand the benefits of solid writing skills.
As an adjunct, I am a wandering intellectual, setting up camp in whichever classroom the campus administration sees fit to assign to me. My car is my portable office, the backseat strewn with once neatly stacked piles of books and papers whose orderliness is repeatedly upset by sudden braking. Boxes of chalk and rubber-banded collections of dry erase board markers are tucked away in the zipped pockets of my briefcase (you just never know). My lunch hour at my full-time job finds me eating peanut butter sandwiches while perusing various periodicals on effective teaching strategies and writing pedagogy.
Usually, I hold it all together well-–there is no greater satisfaction to me than placing a checkmark in red ink next to an item on my to-do list. And yet, those moments when I slip, when the plan doesn’t go smoothly, are the ones that cause me angst.
Sometimes, after those moments have passed and my ego has recovered, I stop for a short while to simply “be.” I steal a few hours, or an entire Saturday, from my schedule to reflect on why I persist in teaching. Why do I teach at all? Wouldn’t I rather be at home enjoying dinner with my husband at 6 p.m. instead of taking attendance?
After all, I have a full-time job that pays my bills and even allows me to splurge on the occasional sweater from the Spiegel catalog. Financially, I am satisfied. I feel creatively satisfied as well thanks to free-lance writing. I work at my fiction and non-fiction, and have had some success. In addition, my writing assignments offer me a chance to learn about everything from malaria research to post-colonial Indian literature to Sherlock Holmes pastiches–-all while racking up clips for my portfolio.
The challenge is to remember which part of my life teaching satisfies. Dulled by the sometimes self-righteous attitude of students who believe that showing up to class automatically entitles them to an “A,” I often lose the desire and motivation to teach.
However, few things are more intellectually stimulating than struggling to explain the uses and abuses of the comma, or the various logical fallacies that could cripple an argument. It is gratifying to see that “Oh, I get it” expression cross someone’s face.
I’m not implying (in the least) that my teaching could drastically improve the lives of my students. Most of them, essentially, want to pass the course and move on. But
when I see a well-argued paper or a quick smile of com-prehension, I know that, despite the never-ending vul-nerabilities of teaching, it has drastically improved at least one life–-mine.
