Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Let' s Make this as Painful as Possible!

This is my last week at School Two.  I'm nearly finished grading all the papers and portfolios for those two classes.  Today was my last day there and it started out pretty well.  It was nice that more than one person in my Composition II class thanked me for the course and said they enjoyed it.  My day should've stopped there.

Then I checked my email.

From School One, the one that has dismissed all the current adjuncts, came an email request.  This missive went out to the entire department, but it could just as easily have been sent to a list of only the permanent faculty members.  Instead, every single one of us was asked to do a big favor for the new horde of incoming TAs--our replacements:  would all faculty be so kind as to submit their assignments and prompts to be stored electronically for these students to access?

Excuse me?

I've just been told that I'm no longer needed.  It is then implied that I am not good enough to go through the existent conversion to permanent faculty member process that is part of our contract, but my ASSIGNMENTS would be APPRECIATED?!

Nope.

So very much nope that if nope had a tonnage measurement this would break the scales of Nope-i-ness.

My years of professional education courses, of teaching experience, of trial-and-error--->reflection--->reconfiguration ARE MOST CERTAINLY NOT going to go to the people who will be paid less money to do my job.

Would I share ideas with a colleague? Yes.  Have I done this in the past? Yes.  This is what makes a community of teacher/scholars function well.  Should I leave my hard work to be vampirishly siphoned off by those with no context or knowledge of me and my methodology?  Hell no.

This was an absurd and highly offensive request.  A parting blow with just over a week to go.  A reminder that we are not wanted, just our products that are beneficial to others. If that isn't greasing the wheels of the corporate education machine with our own bodies and minds, I don't know what is.

I sincerely hope that any other adjunct or TA who is not returning ignores that request and doesn't submit a damn thing.  I do admit that one friend's suggestion of turning in a syllabus with a theme of adjunctification amused me, but I don't have the time or the patience to even make a satirical stab at an assignment for this.

A request such as this takes the cake.  This cake, to be precise:

Misspelled Adjunct Cake

P.S.  Adjuncts, don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out.

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