I need to go but I am sitting through the last of my Spanish 201 related pain so that when I start driving, I will at least not be so distracted that I inadvertently crash the car. While I wait for that, I might as well discuss the issue at hand. I have been saying these things to my direct supervisors for years and they have not listened. Therefore I am saying them on Facebook and here.
To wit: while it may be expedient in the short term for the administration to assign me to Spanish 201 and to instruct me to divine, based on what a certain instructor vaguely says, what our methodology and philosophy for this course are, and to attempt to follow her lead, this form of management is immediately destructive to me, and to others. It is also destructive to the program as whole, and to the department, the college, the university, the field, and the profession, for reasons I can spell out.
I demand a clear syllabus if we are to have parallel courses. I also demand accurate information on the concrete goals of this language sequence. I demand to know what kind of progress other sections of the course are making on the official syllabus, or how they have modified it. I further demand specific lesson plans if I am not to have a voice in the formation of this program, and I demand the right to observe others’ courses if it is true that (a) their goals and methods are completely different from mine and (b) their goals are those of the department, such that I really should fall into line.
The only motivation I can see for the consistent practice by the administration and the senior faculty in French of undermining all research faculty in Spanish by pitting them against instructors over the nature and quality of a lower division language sequence, would be a desire to destroy Spanish in the erroneous, but often expressed belief that this improves the situation of French.
The only answer to this problem is to liberate us now. If we were liberated, we would have teaching loads like the French and could be more practically evaluated against the French. The instructors, furthermore, would not be saddled with us. The reason we cannot be liberated, however, is that instructors would like to teach some of the upper division courses; as long as they are allowed to do this, we must teach some of the lower division ones. French prefers to give these instructors this perk because they, after all, are considered more permanent than are ladder faculty in Spanish.
A colleague in English says it is impossible to change this situation in the language program but I must change it as I have been trying to work with it in a cooperative fashion for 15 years and this has borne no fruit. I have decided to take a voice in the creation of this program for the first time, rather than render unto Caesar what is alleged to be Caesar’s. I have gone ahead with this and it has done me good, even though I do not know whether I have been heard or whether my comments have been welcome.
The remarks I have made in the department are helpful to me because will justify my making some of my own decisions about this course, rather than just try to obey the M.A.s (which is what I am directed to do), the next time I teach it. The formulation of the remarks already submitted has also helped me to prepare for a conversation with my chair in which I shall propose my removal from this sequence, as I am only in it in the first place due to short staffing and I could more effectively fill in in other areas where staffing is also short.
Because of what politics are in my department, my plan is very courageous and my hopes are very ambitious. The creation of the plan has taken a great deal of thought and the plan will take a great deal of fortitude to carry out. However, I have come to the conclusion after 15 years of heavy pain that it is what I must do, and I am going to do it, or at least, I am going to push ahead on the suggestions I plan to make, for the reasons I have already articulated.
It is a very big deal. It is a revolution, and in revolutions, you cannot flinch. My colleague in English says I will fail, and everyone always predicts I will fail at everything, but the fact is that I have never failed at anything I considered necessary and planned well, except when I allowed myself to be blown off course by the naysaying of others.
My colleague in English also points out that we are going to have David Vitter as governor when we finally get rid of Jindal, which will mean eight more years of suffering. He reminds me that we will never recover from the salary loss under Jindal. All of these things only mean I have to get out of here. The only way to get out is not to be oppressed and to build vita. And the only way to build vita is not to be oppressed.
A way to survive here, it is true, is to bow one’s head and accept a lot of blows, and this is what many choose as well as what the administration tries to force. There is no way this is actually a good idea for anyone and furthermore, whom does it serve? Does it serve the students, the university ultimately, the field, the profession? Whom does it serve?
#OccupyHE.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 