Teaching at a comprehensive state college means participating in an institution that places value upon teaching in a way that research universities do not. Of course there is a certain irony in the expression of that value in the creation of a heavy teaching load. Yes, faculty at institutions like Cortland don't have the research pressures of our other colleagues (though as I noted in my earlier post, this is changing), but is teaching 70 or more students or having four separate preps really conducive to an excellence in teaching that this value implies?
Clearly, there is an economic imperative behind teaching loads, but I don't think that's the sole reason here. Instead, there is a longstanding logic here that pits administrators against faculty, and in the case of SUNY, a union of professors against the state government. As much as we would deny it, this adversarial relationship, much like that of the courtroom, suggests the faculty tries to get as much as it can for as little possible work, and the administrators try to get as much labor for the smallest possible cost. And both sides do so in the name of the students, just as all lawyers argue in the interests of justice.
This context makes asking the following question problematic, but here goes. If I teach 7 courses a year, 6 different preps, 5 "writing-intensive" courses, this means I am likely trying to teach more than 100 students in writing courses, with an additional 60 students in some general education literature course. Now "writing-intensive" is our designation for WAC/WID courses. They require 15 pages of graded writing with an opportunity for revision. It doesn't really mean teaching writing; it just means using writing as a tool for learning/evaluation. I.e. I could assign three five-page response papers and require students to revise at least one for a better grade.
If I did that I'd be grading 2000 pages of student writing, assuming the students only revised one paper and I didn't assign any writing in my non-writing intensive courses. The reality is that I'm probably going to be reading and grading 3000 pages of student writing a year. If I am clever, I can spread that out over 20 weeks or about 150 pages a week. If I am amazingly efficient, I can respond to a 5-page paper in 15 minutes (3 min/pg). That's 450 minutes, 7.5 hrs/wk.
Of course, writing-intensive is really a misnomer for what I am doing. Though I am using writing as a tool for learning and evaluation, more specifically I am teaching writing practices. This requires students to do significantly more and more regular writing than the official designation of the WI requires. If I was focused on improving writing practices, I would having my students spending 3-4 hours a week writing for my class, plus writing during class. Let's say modestly that that would be 40 pages a semester, double the estimation above. I would also be meeting in conference with students. Anyway, you get the idea.
Where is this meandering post getting to? Teaching a load of writing-intensive courses is a tremendous amount of work. Nearly every department on campus resists these courses. Very few faculty teach more than one a year. English faculty generally teach several. Of course professional writing faculty teaching writing intensive courses exclusively--with actually far more writing than writing-intensive suggests. This is an absolute necessity of teaching writing. You can't have a writing course with only 15-20 pages of writing, that's little more than a page a week! But how do you respond to student writing in the way this is necessary for such courses when you have so many students?
Obviously I'm not the first one to ask such questions. There are many adjuncts on my campus who teach 5 sections of comp between various campuses. They have 100 writing students.
So what happens when one begins to uncover the challenges of teaching practices rather than teaching knowledge? Even in other disciplines where one might teach an understanding of methods, these methods are specific/limited in comparison with writing as a fundamental process for the production and communication of knowledge. Becoming a writer when one was not, which is essentially the becoming these students undertake, is a fundamental subjective transformation with cultural-ideological consequences. It is not simply the addition of a discrete skill set.
It remains to be seen, though I am very doubtful, that a college administration can come to recognize the expertise of their own faculty and understand the stakes of teaching practices rather than simply misrecognizing such explanations as yet another move in their ongoing struggle with faculty.
Recent Comments