The Journalings of an Adjunct English Instructor
Part I: Journals of a College English Instructor
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¶ 3 Leave a comment on paragraph 3 0 Getting the Job
¶ 4 Leave a comment on paragraph 4 0 One of the most nerve-wracking parts of academic life is proving to a prospective English Dept. chair that you are worthy of standing in front of a classroom of minds to teach them something important about the literary world. As a fairly new teacher, I have had the “lucky” experience of applying and interviewing for certain adjunct roles. Some positions are for teaching composition, while others are a bit more interesting and exciting. In my most recent job interview, I was being asked whether I would be able to teach a series of upper level English courses for adult learners who were working on finishing up their bachelor degrees. Of course I wanted this job, and was elated when I was hired. But what I did not really know was what kind of surprise I was in for until that very first class day.
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¶ 6 Leave a comment on paragraph 6 0 Preparing the Syllabus
¶ 7 Leave a comment on paragraph 7 0 Whenever I am creating a new syllabus, I have a mixture of feelings and concerns that are built around my anxieties of how the students will perceive the required course material. Some colleges choose the anthology I am supposed to teach from, but teaching at this new college, I am given total academic freedom, so I really struggled with what I wanted to do with this syllabus and what would eventually find its way onto the page. After talking to a lot of colleagues and classmates, I decided on using literary theory as a way for the class to discuss a lot of the issues within the three main novels we would be reading throughout the class. While I did have a sinking feeling that this theory might become somewhat oppositional, I felt as though I would be prepared for the students’’ resistance to theory.
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¶ 9 Leave a comment on paragraph 9 0 A Domino Effect
¶ 10 Leave a comment on paragraph 10 1 As my small class of ten students piled in for our first class meeting, I was energetic and confident that the syllabus I had pieced together was a powerful one that would engage their minds and prompt them to ask important questions about themselves and their own perceptions of the world. The first text they are being asked to read is Things Fall Apart, followed by Heart of Darkness, and then concluding with The Awakening. None of them had read any of the texts, so part of my plan had worked. I tried choosing narratives they were unfamiliar with and would not know about specifically because I want them to experience the material and its newness all at once. This way, they will be able to formulate questions and embark on attempting to answer those questions throughout the term. I lost them when it came time to discuss the part of the syllabus involving the literary theory. At this point, everything had been going smoothly, and then WHAM! It all came tumbling down on top of me. One student raised her hand and asked what the purpose of knowing any of this really was? She already had a full-time job, three children, and a life that took much time away from her, so how was she supposed to fit all of this other English theory in? She was perfectly fine with reading the texts, but that extra step of having the class think about theory was just overboard and asking way too much of them. What happened next was a domino effect of complaints, whining, and dismay at what this course was doing to them as students. I tried to listen and understand where they were coming from, and as each one laid down their burden before us all, I became more and more upset at how the environment had changed so drastically so quickly simply because theory was something so completely foreign to them and from what I gathered from this exchange: useless, purposeless, and wasteful. By asking this class to consider how theory can guide us through the discourse of literature, it seemed as though I was asking them to create electricity from nothing. I left that night with a pounding headache and a pain in the pit of my stomach.
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¶ 12 Leave a comment on paragraph 12 0 Disappointment and Depression
¶ 13 Leave a comment on paragraph 13 1 My initial reaction of shock soon turned into a grief of disappointment and despair. Why had this class so strongly opposed theory? What is it about theory that makes students fearful? Why did I agree to teach this class in the first place? I was excited and invigorated before class started and by the end, my shoulders were drooping and my head swimming with these questions about purpose. On my way home I frantically called my fiancé to describe the two agonizing hours I had spent with these new students, but there was no answer. I then proceeded to call mom and still, no answer on the other end. I guess this was something I would need to figure out on my own. To understand the dynamics of a classroom really is a solitary experience, so I am not sure how much help my mother or fiancé truly would have been, but still, I needed to vent my discouragement and feelings of panic. Was I doing something wrong here? What is it that we do in an English classroom that stirs up these emotions and feelings of anxiety?
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¶ 15 Leave a comment on paragraph 15 0 Understanding the Student
¶ 16 Leave a comment on paragraph 16 0 100% of these students are working toward becoming registered nurses, so was this a classic case of the humanities (us) vs. sciences (them) paradigm? I am devotedly opposed to thinking along these binaries, and refuse to acknowledge that a student studying in the health sciences field cannot come to grapple with literary theoretical concerns and application. After I had a full day’s distance from our first class meeting, I started discussing what had happened with colleagues from another institution I teach at and they all pretty much said that I need to hold strong to my course goals and do not let the student complaints deter me from what I envision for them to take away from the course. My older sister, a certified and competent therapist, told me that because of the large age difference between myself and the whole of the class, they may have been testing me to see how much they could get away with. Whatever the case may be, I was determined to walk into that classroom the following week, prepared to guide them through the first part of their journey into literary theory.
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Pat II: Using Theory
¶ 19 Leave a comment on paragraph 19 0 Saidiya Hartman’s memoir, Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route, illustrates, in a unique way, the inadequacies an academic scholar and researcher feels as she embarks on a journey into the past of her own family. What she uncovers in Ghana is not what she thought she would find. Her discovery of failure and disenchantment is expressed consistently and insistently throughout the memoir with the word stranger. In the memoir she writes that:
¶ 20 Leave a comment on paragraph 20 0 I had come to Ghana too late and with too few talents. I couldn’t electrify the country or construct a dam or build houses or clear a road or run a televeision station or design an urban water system or tend to the sick or improve the sanitation system or revitalize the economy or cancel debt […] No one had invited me. I was just another stranger, an academic from the States conducting research on slavery, which, in most people’s eyes, made me about as indispensable as a heater in the tropics (45).
¶ 21 Leave a comment on paragraph 21 1 This lengthy passage speaks volumes to Part I. The frustration I was feeling from my class of nursing students caused me to experience a version of this strangeness that Hartman describes so potently. Hartman’s words seems to suggest that a humanities academic holds no comparison to the humanitarian efforts needed to help Ghana in its current historical present. She cannot dig ditches or heal the sick. The only thing she can do is observe and write those observations down; what use does this have for Ghana and its people? On a much more microcosmic scale, a version of this similar question is something I began to grapple with after that first night: what use does theory have for these students before me? As science students, they do not see the relevance nor purpose in learning literary theory, and as their instructor, I felt the strangeness and powerlessness that Hartman discusses throughout her memoir. Like Hartman, she experiences a type of haunting, which is defined by Gordon in Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. For Gordon, she uses the term “to describe those singular yet repetitive instances when home becomes unfamiliar, when your bearings on the world lose direction, when the over-and-done with comes alive, when what’s been in your blind spot comes into view” (Loc. 201). The thing that really resonates with me about Gordon’s particular use of the term haunting and its relation to my experience with teaching this particular group is that this moment of haunting is something that “is distinctive for producing a something-to-be-done” (Loc. 214). As the teacher of this class, I am haunted by the very things I have been taught in the past about literary theory and its place within the classroom, and the “blind spot” that appeared before me was theory’s inability to speak to individuals outside of literary studies. The main thing that I must listen to Gordon about though is that I must not remain frozen in an animated state that comes from this haunting. Instead, something must be done, so I will plow right on through, and hopefully a student or two will take something away from the theoretical lenses for the class.
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Part III: Moving Forward
¶ 24 Leave a comment on paragraph 24 0 Since writing this critical memoir, we have had our second class where we discussed the first part of Things Fall Apart. We took a look at theories of New Historicism and the classroom was full of discussion and to my surprise…energized dialogue about both the text itself and the critical lens. As the students were filing out, a student came up to me and told me she really enjoyed the class and it has caused her to think about different perspectives. My insides were glowing when I heard these words because this is what I was aiming for when designing this course. It also echoes what Achebe tells us about the dangers of becoming too deeply rooted in one space or idea:
¶ 25 Leave a comment on paragraph 25 0 “I believe in the complexity of the human story and that there’s no way you can tell that story in one way and say, This is it. Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dances in the public arena. The Igbo people say, if you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena. Dancing. If you’re rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world’s stories should be told—from many different perspectives.”
¶ 26 Leave a comment on paragraph 26 1 Hopefully by the end of the course, the use of theory will have caused some students to consider, reconsider, and re-evaluate their own assumptions about the world in which they live and the past worlds that have brought them here.
I remember you telling us about this in class. It must have been really hard to stand by and watch as what you had spent so much time preparing and considering carefully was attacked! I know I would have taken it personally as you did.