The Heroes (2002)

Law Firm Strikes Gold For Adjuncts' Golden Years

by Cara Nissman

Eva Mader has taught part-time for more than 20 years, but has only recently discovered she might have been entitled to receive retirement benefits since she started, thanks to the efforts of the Se attle-based law firm Bendich, Stobaugh & Strong, P.C.

“People used to ask when I was going to retire,” said Mader, a part-time German instructor for 24 years at North Seattle Community College. “I used to say, ‘Don’t use that word retirement with me because I’m not going to retire. Retirement means you’re getting money from your employer when you leave.’ I would say, ‘One day, Eva’s not coming back.’”

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Going The Distance

20 Time-Saving Tips for Faculty Who Teach Distance Education Courses

Planning ahead, setting limits, and tapping into reusable sources are ways to keep on-line teaching from consuming your life. Here are 20 tips on how to save time in your work as a distance educator:

1. Post all assignments, lectures, calendar entries, and topic discussions at the beginning of the course. Though this means a lot of work up front, but it pays off later in easing the challenge of course management, allowing you to focus on responding to students. Many colleges now set deadlines at least several weeks before the term begins for on-line courses to be complete.

2. Make sure students have passed an orientation quiz or completed an on-line scavenger hunt at the start of the semester so that they know how to navigate the course; this will reduce the number of questions later.

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The Mentor Is In

Clean up In Aisle Five

Posted: May 24th, 2010

In my teaching philosophy, the student is embedded within a context, an environment, that can either help or hinder learning. Today I want to talk about an unsung aspect of classroom management: being the janitor.  In today's cheeseparing world of section cuts and budget crises, the one thing you can count on is that every department on campus is understaffed, including maintenence.  When you consider how low a priority campus upkeep could be in the flush years, it should not surprise any of us to find ourselves now working in environments Mrs. Havisham would have despised.

I remember, as an undergraduate learning (perhaps apocryphally) that outside windows at my alma mater were washed only every seven years. As an anthropologist, I am used to finding my departments stuffed in the basements and dungeons of the oldest and grottiest of buildings; perhaps as a nod to the archaeologists. So it is, that, over the years, I have learned to come equipped with a tub of Clorox wipes (desks not cleaned since the Cretaceous), my own whiteboard cleaner, air freshener (mold in the ventilation), and even WD 40! 

This morning provides a case in point. Currently, my classes are being held in a building that is soon to be demolished. Outwardly full of charm, built in the 1920s in the Mission Revival style, inside it is wall-to-wall scuffed linoleum, broken window blinds, and fetid smells from facilities limping to extinction. "This building is dying," said one of my students perceptively. 

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