Adjunct, Schmadjunct
[Unpublished: Submitted in 2008 As Part of Application To Become a
Knoxville News Sentinel Community Columnist]
News about how many adjuncts UT employs may surprise people whose college days are a distant memory. These people may remember some graduate teaching assistant who only semi-spoke English or some lab assistant impatiently explaining to lowly undergraduates how to solder leads or titrate. But one thing they probably don’t remember is a corps of adjuncts teaching the courses.
Years ago, there was an expectation that professors — whether junior, assistant, associate, or full — would actually teach most courses. This was partly for reasons of quality control, but mostly because low though the professorial salaries might be, teaching was what they were actually paid for. A university might lure a famous researcher or scholar by offering a higher salary, but he was still expected to teach, not do just research and consulting.
UT and other educational institutions claim that using adjuncts in bulk is cost effective; so it may be. But it is hard to see how they could argue that the quality of education would not go down. After all, if a professor is hired because he has the “right” credentials for teaching at the college level — e.g., a PhD — then it is hard to see why a person with “only” a master’s degree would be adequate to teach courses formerly taught by professors, without a decline in the quality of the instruction. The truth is, of course, that many people who don’t have a PhD are excellent teachers and many who do are not; a supposedly less qualified person might be more effective than a more qualified one and thus be a better bargain for a student. This kind of calculation does not seem to be made by UT et al., however, as they would then have to do a serious evaluation of professors for teaching effectiveness.
Regarding the low pay, consider the following about several institutions besides UT. Some years ago, I worked for one as an adjunct teaching a mathematics course (basically analytical geometry). I was paid $16 an hour, but as I found out with my first paycheck, that was only for the contact or in-class hours. Thus I was paid $64 for my four hours a week. I had to prepare my own class notes, work out the in-class demonstration problems, select and work out the homework problems, and make up and grade all the tests. It worked out to about $4 per hour for the actual hours worked. There were no benefits and no office for meeting students.
Some years later, I applied to work as an adjunct at two other colleges. One wanted an adjunct for a three-credit history of science course, which paid $2300 and would be given in a four-hour weekly chunk for 11 weeks. With an hour of prep time for the lecture and two hours of grading and student help time for each contact hour (based on the probable number of students), the pay would effectively be $13 per hour. At the other college, the pay would be $1200 for a calculus course, in a four-hour weekly chunk for nine weeks; the adjunct had to be available for 15 minutes before and after the class for the 25 students; and again there were no benefits or office. I estimated the effective pay at $7.11 per hour.
My two adult children say that in their current jobs waiting tables, they earn at least $10 per hour. A cashier at my local Food Lion tells me that cashiers start at $7.00 per hour. I have given up lecturing my children about the value of higher education.
In a Tutoring Room
[Published in the Knoxville News Sentinel, November 22, 2009]
One of my tutoring gigs at Pellissippi State Community College is in Developmental Math (aka Remedial Math).
DM is a computer-based course, so although there is class time, there are no formal lectures. Instead, the students do most of their work in the DM Math Center, where they sit at dozens of computers placed on tables around a large room. We tutors walk around the room, waiting for a hand to be raised to summon us. I know the students’ names because these are displayed across the top of their computer screens.
Most of the students are young, but some are in their forties and fifties. Most are balancing jobs and school and sometimes childrearing. They are allowed to use their iPods while they work, to help them concentrate. It seems to work, especially for those with ADD. The students like to sit with their friends, often former high school classmates. This might appear to be a sure recipe for wasting time, but most soon settle down to work.
Perhaps half the students are female. Many are black or Hispanic or Asian-American or from foreign countries like Russia and Pakistan. Two attractive young girls wear the headscarves of Islam and the only skin they show is on their hands and faces. But both wear jeans and one of them, model-slim, wears satin-trimmed headscarves and fashionable shoes. I am amazed when she tells me she has a son.
Very few students dress up. The caste dress of high school (goth, jock, etc.) continues to be the uniform for some, but most favor what might be termed peer-casual. The pants of one boy do not cover any part of his hips. When he stands, his shirt is pulled down over his backside, but when he sits, only a thin layer of undershorts separates his skin from the seat. But he is very polite and thanks me after every encounter, as most of the students do — they were raised right.
Many students have obvious tattoos; one girl even has her name tattooed across the back of her neck. Several of the boys and one or two of the girls appear to be gay. Some others dress so androgynously that I can tell their sex only by looking at their names on their screens. It is distressing to see how many of the students are obese, especially the young women; I fear for their future prospects in employment and romance.
One older man uses a cane. He walks two buildings over to take his math tests because it costs him as much in pain and effort to walk out to his handicapped parking spot, move his car to the other building, park again, and walk into the testing center. A nearly blind girl works with her face just inches from the screen. Two students are in motorized scooter chairs. One can walk normally, but her doctor orders her to her chair when her blood sugar kicks up. The other appears to have cerebral palsy and speaks only in Wookie vocalizations. He has a special keyboard that converts his typing into speech, but the trembling of his fingers makes that difficult. A special overlay helps guide his fingers onto the keys he wants. Despite these challenges, he has a great sense of humor.
In this room, however, none of these differences matter. Whoever the students are, they have all come here to contend with Mathematics, mano a mano. We tutors guide and encourage, but in the end, each battle is personal and each victory individual. When a student conquers a problem, he has found the same result that everyone else before and after him in history would find — even Newton, even Einstein. Such is the nature of that democratic leveler Mathematics.
Race to the Where?
[Published in the Knoxville News Sentinel, January 24, 2010]
Recently there has been a flurry of educational reform proposals by state officials, including assessing student competence with more testing and increasing teacher accountability.
For a regular reader of local newspapers, this is mostly all a big yawn because we’ve been hearing these same proposals for years. The proposals either die a quick death or they fail to produce the desired effect, often because of insufficient follow-through. The “new” stuff seems to be….well, the same old stuff.
But the News-Sentinel recently praised Battelle Memorial Institute for partnering with the state “to establish a network of math and science programs in Tennessee schools”. We already have such programs in all Tennessee schools, of course, but this flashy new STEM Innovation Network is supposed to be different.
The original STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Coalition is a consortium of universities, teacher associations, and businesses. Rather than advocating specific approaches, they seem to spend their time urging Congress to spend more money on education and then congratulating Congress for doing so.
The Tennessee network is patterned after an Ohio STEM network (OSLN). OSLN’s Web site is short on specifics, but enthusiastic “stories” suggest that the approach is to supplement existing teaching not by providing more teacher support but by taking class time for various gimmicky games and “activities”. For example, one class wrote their names on Styrofoam cups and sent them off to a deep-sea dive performed by some scientific foundation. The cups came back squashed down to an inch high. This was supposed to stimulate student interest in physics and math, but it wasn’t even a hands-on scientific experiment.
Federal “Race to the Top” program money is to be used to help fund this and other new Tennessee programs. This money is given to states to “find innovative, ambitious ways” to implement “coherent, compelling, and comprehensive education reform”. Could it be that the STEM proposal is just another one of those stimulus efforts that values innovation over substance — new for the sake of new — and is really all about scoring some of that federal money being thrown about so freely nowadays?
Why don’t we ask the teachers themselves what they need? I would bet that they would prefer to have more time for actual teaching and to get targeted support in their efforts. They might support the three R’s: Rationale, Repetition, and Reinforcement. (E.g., for math, this is seeing a presentation of how to work problems, working many homework problems, and going over missed test and homework problems.) Some suggestions:
— Don’t allow students to use calculators until the seventh grade and then only on approved work (to develop their number sense, they need to practice their multiplication and long division)
— Provide more science equipment (not just computers, but microscopes, beakers, etc.)
— Provide non-student administrative assistants/runners to groups of math and science teachers to do paperwork such as taking roll and entering grades
— Provide non-student lab assistants to each science department
— Provide non-student math and science tutors for individual help; one day a week could be Math Lab Day (doing problem sheets or going over missed problems with the teacher, assisted by tutors)
— Make more use of master teachers; provide a consulting fee to retired teachers with strong reputations for effectiveness to demonstrate their teaching techniques (e.g., in explaining how to balance a chemical equation)
As one who has loved math and science from the cradle, I want all kids to learn and enjoy these subjects (especially the comforting parts, such as how 1 + 1 will always be 2 no matter what). But I have reservations about spending millions on fluffy-minded or diffuse activities. Surely if the teaching is well supported, the test scores will take care of themselves.
Zero Tolerance for Zero Tolerance
[Published in the Knoxville News Sentinel After May 3, 2009]
I say let’s get rid of the zero tolerance policy in the schools. Who’s with me?
Last fall Anderson County kicked out seven children, including one kindergartner. His offense? According to school officials, he brought a toy gun to school.
Say what? How responsible could a child be at only 5 or 6 years old? How effective could this punishment be for such a child? It seems that the penalty for irresponsibility is actually being laid on his parents.
Last fall I was tutoring a bright student preparing for the ACT (test). After a couple of months, his mother told me he had just been kicked out of school. It seems that his friend, who had recently lost his mother, had been drinking at school. My tutee remonstrated with him and emptied his bottle down the drain. However, the friend was drunk enough that his condition was detected later in the day. Upon being sent to the office, the friend had to hand over his cell phone to school officials, who read his text messages. My tutee’s involvement was thus discovered. Although my tutee acted honorably in what he viewed as his friend’s best interests, he was faulted for touching the alcohol and for not having ratted on his friend. He was expelled for the rest of the semester. This was the first semester of his senior year, when he was supposed to be applying to colleges. I think he paid far too heavy a price for trying to support his friend through his bereavement depression.
When I asked rhetorically why the school officials would kick these two kids out of school, a smart and sensible friend of mine (a chemist who has had three children in the public schools) opined that it was because the school officials “don’t want to have to think and make decisions”. That had been my thought too.
My daughter was kicked out of school when she was 14, in a vandalism incident involving two boys and two girls. This was not called a zero tolerance offense but it was treated as one, in that all four children were deemed to be equally responsible. As the assistant DA told me, the boys were prosecuted, but not the girls, because all four children’s stories were consistent in stating that the boys were responsible and not the girls; in fact, the girls were not physically present while the boys were doing the damage and had no idea that the boys were going to trash the school. I pointed out to the ADA that the school system insisted that the girls were equally responsible, citing unnamed juvenile informants who allegedly said that the girls had foreknowledge of the event. Our lawyer was not allowed to talk with these informants or even to see their statements. The school resource officer had my daughter write out her statement and sign it before we parents were called by the school about the incident. The ADA replied with some bitterness that this circumventing of due process was why her office held the school systems’ legal processes in low regard.
At the school hearing, we found out the school had past disciplinary issues with my daughter that they had never told us about, including an item that might affect our daughter’s health. For the appeal hearing, the school system got to select the judge and the venue; falsification of a document by a school employee was demonstrated but ignored.
My daughter suffered a lot psychologically, especially since her class went on to high school without her and she felt like a pariah. And for what? Her first year in high school was also difficult, but eventually she recovered her love of learning and graduated with four AP credits. (She’s now a graduate student in chemistry at Georgia Tech.)
I do not mean to argue that all children should be kept in school: certainly the genuine problem children, such as the truly violent, the clearly psychotic, and the unregenerately disruptive, should be handled in a separate location. But to expel a child for a single fist fight or a single incident of drinking? Even worse, for peripheral involvement such as not ratting on others? I am sympathetic to the difficulty of making and justifying decisions on a case-by-case basis, but it can be and should be done. Our courts, after all, have a scale of punishments for each crime, recognizing that circumstances differ, as per the maxim “Let the punishment fit the crime”.
And for those of you who are still doubtful, let me say two words: Dustin Seal. Space does not permit me to discuss this example of a young life unjustly blasted, but you can Google it. And take it to heart.
Response to Pat Postma’s Backing of Software Purchase by the Oak Ridge School System
[Published by The Oak Ridger, November 17, 2010, as a guest column]
Pat Postma wrote a nice piece on the Oak Ridge Public Schools Foundation’s campaign to raise $350K for new educational tracking software. Alas, one still has questions.
Ms. Postma uses the slogan term “What Matters” in lower case, as though it had graduated from a slogan to a received notion. How did that happen? Surely the jury is still out on that: one person’s “what matters” is another person’s “no, never mind” or even “out of the question”.
It is still not clear from Ms. Postma’s writeup whether it was the school system’s idea to obtain the software or the board’s. That is an important detail because it would shed light on how the school administration prioritizes.
Ms. Postma says that businessmen, faced with “relentless pressure” from around the globe, use expensive technology. Certainly many business software programs are very expensive, e.g., SAP or the ORACLE line. But those are for big companies with huge and complex inventories for which tens of millions of dollars could be on the line with every transaction. Tracking individual student progress and teacher effectiveness in a small school system is a far simpler proposition and should be priced accordingly. So one has to wonder again what, exactly, does the proposed software do that makes it a must for Oak Ridge and why does it cost so much? What company produces it? Do they have a track record with this software? Any business would want to know that about any software they proposed to purchase.
Ms. Postma states that the software “will provide a way for teachers to know the whole student”. How, exactly? As I and others have pointed out, the teacher is the best source of information as to how a child is doing and in what areas he is proficient and deficient. The software can deal with the numbers, e.g., quiz and homework scores, but it will fail at delivering a total assessment of the child because not all of the assessment of a child can be done quantitatively. It seems that the software is being presented in part as a means to quantify what is not readily quantifiable.
But with regard to quantification, e.g., is a quiz score going to be input as just one number, or are the scores on each problem going to be input? The former is a rough indicator of the child’s mastery of the particular topics covered by the quiz, but the individual problem scores could help diagnose the exact points that the child does not understand. However, the teacher, in grading the quizzes, can diagnose that without having to hear it from the software. It is important to know the details of how the software works and thus how it is going to provide information not already known. It is also important to ascertain if the teacher will have to be spending a huge amount of time entering not just quiz scores, but problem scores, which could take time away from teaching.
Surely there are other school needs more important than this tracking program, especially since the school system seems to have purchased another one relatively recently. For example, a fellow observer of the school system notes that it has claimed for years that it “desperately” needs a new school administration building, including a new preschool facility. Could the $350K not be better spent on that, either on the preschool facility or as the down payment on the design and construction planning of a new building? And as Mr. McDuffie stated in a recent letter, giving kids a good start in preschool (with its various screening programs for learning problems) could be one of the best things we could do to foster children’s later success in school.
Ms. Postma somehow segues from discussing problem children to concluding that the new software “is the tool to help us measure and improve and be aware of what individual students need and how they respond”. Not to dis Ms. Postma, but I really doubt that a mere piece of software can do that. The real danger is that the administration will look at the software as a means to buy time for themselves in terms of accountability, e.g., by saying that “although test scores this year are not encouraging, we expect that after we have used the software for a few years, we should be able to tweak our courses, teacher training, etc., to obtain optimal results!” There is also the danger that the software, whose statistical and related programming is surely based on certain assumptions, will “prove” that certain teachers or course structures or school-produced tests are adequate or inadequate when experienced educational auditors would not agree that that was the case.
I would like to add that my personal interest in all this is to get the best educational outcome for the young. My little high school in my little backwater town in Arizona prepared me very well for college. We had to do a zillion math problems, write dozens of essays and lab reports, and read whole books. And not just me and my fellow college-bound students, but those who went on to jobs or to trade, beauty, and secretarial schools. Change for the sake of change is not necessarily progress.
Use of Technology in Education
[Published in the Knoxville News Sentinel after September 23, 2013]
After 30 years in radiological engineering and five years of tutoring college and school students in math, physics, and foreign languages, I became alarmed at the touting of technology as the panacea for school performance problems. So I prepared a talk called “Some Observations on the Use of Technology in Education” to comment on the ways people actually learn and the consequent limitations of technology.
I envisioned the target audience to be the League of Women Voters. I offered twice to give my talk to the Oak Ridge chapter, but they never replied. In case anyone else is interested, here are some highlights.
One college remedial math program has no paper text or teacher lectures; students read explanations online and then work problems presented on the computer. The program pops up boxes and diagrams to get the students started and to indicate what to do next. But the students rely so much on the boxes that given a paper test, many cannot seem to figure out what to do. So eventually the students were given a paper pretest as preparation for the actual paper test. Many students had to do two or more pretests before being allowed to take the test. Most students said they preferred a human teacher doing problems on the board.
Another issue: this program did not allow a student to go on to the next problem until he had correctly worked the present problem. Some students wasted a whole weekend trying to work one problem, until they could get help on Monday.
In some language and math courses, a teacher presents lectures but students must use a computer program to see the homework and enter their answers. The computer grades the homework, which saves teacher time and automatically records grades. However, since the program accepts only one answer (or only allowed variations), this is an all-or-nothing proposition, i.e., there is no partial credit. If the student misses a single accent mark or decimal point, he loses all the points. Some math programs address this by breaking down problems into parts, with a separate answer entered for each part. But seeing a part marked incorrect does not always help the student figure out where he went wrong — as an annotation on his paper by a teacher would.
Using a computer seems to make students reluctant to resort to manipulations on paper, particularly visual ones; they are mesmerized by the screen. They often just stare at the screen, trying to figure out a math problem completely in their heads. I tell them to copy down the problem “givens” and any accompanying diagram onto paper and work from that. Writing things down and redrawing the diagram helps the student to “digest” the problem, while his annotation of the diagram (e.g. making the tick marks indicating geometric congruency) can get the mental motor running. This also helps with the “front of the mind” issue (cognitive load theory) of trying to hold too much information at once in the short-term memory: capturing the information in the diagram keeps it in front of the eyes without having to take up memory space. This issue is huge for math.
Dividing visual attention between screen and paper is an interruption of the visual focus and thus of the mental process. I believe that the “field of vision” (say a 14″ square) issue is best addressed by using a book and paper, enabling the student, e.g., to have one finger on the book while the other hand writes on the paper. This is an often unappreciated point.
Calculator use is appropriate when the object of a problem is to learn a new math technique rather than to do arithmetic. However, many students have to use their calculators for every little computation, even 7 + 4; they do not know their times tables or comprehend other number relationships. Yet this is essential for developing “number sense”. An eighth-grade student quoted his remedial math teacher as saying that his class was “too old” to be doing math by hand. (Really?) Technology is a wonderful thing, but it is a better servant than teacher. If anybody would like an explanation at greater length, I would be pleased to give it.
