I like the WPA-list for a bunch of reasons. For one, it’s a great place to keep up with the profession. In addition, there are a lot of interesting discussions, and numerous jobs are posted there. But perhaps even more important, I often learn from the list what it is I do not want to do. That’s right, regularly reading the threads helps me determine what types of practices and techniques I do not want to use in my classroom or professional development. This has saved me a great deal of time.

Every couple months I think about going for my doctorate. “It would be wise,” I tell myself, “and I’d be so much more employable.” However, it would take a chunk of five or seven years out of my life. The discussion on the WPA-list for the past week has convinced me to not bother for at least a couple years. While earning a doctorate would, no doubt, increase my chances of getting a tenure-track position with solid pay and health care, earning that piece of paper is no guarantee. And, as I’ve learned repeatedly, if you are happy where you are, then it is goofy to change your situation. Given that I’m happy and pretty content overall, I don’t want any significant changes in my life. Even if I was not very content, there are several aspects that make earning the Ph.D. seem very unappealing.

First, I would have to move somewhere else. Unfortunately, the closest doctoral programs in rhetoric/composition that interest me are in Santa Barbara, California, and Pullman, Washington. I do not like moving. I hate moving. The idea of moving repulses me. Second, I do not want to spend 30 hours a week writing a dissertation. Based on what I have read on the WPA-list and heard from many Ph.D.s, getting the diss done requires that amount of work. If I am going to write 30 hours a week, then I want to write fiction, narratives, book reviews, essays, blogs, and so on. I do not want to spend that much time on composition theory or rhetoric at this point in my life. I wrote two MA theses two years ago and I am not interested in repeating that process any time soon. Perhaps in the future, but not now.

Another important reason I do not want to go for a Ph.D. is that I have no idea what I want to study and research. It is foolish to enter a doctoral program without a sense of direction. This dovetails perfectly with my final reason: I am happy teaching and not doing research. I know that I will need to do research in the future, and I am interested in eventually pursuing that path. However, I like teaching. I want to improve my teaching. Focusing on teaching makes much more sense to me now than forcing myself to do something I’m only half interested in: a doctoral program. While I have been concerned about my lack of a Ph.D. — according to former mentors, teaching as an adjunct for more than two years will render me as academic “dead wood” — I no longer worry about it.

Pursuing a Ph.D. would not be a positive, useful, or viable experience for me at this time, and I now have a slew of reasons why. If I had not subscribed to the WPA-list, if I was not tapped into other professional groups and following other dialogues, it is likely that I would not be as informed. Knowing myself, I might have been foolish enough to apply to a doctoral program before I was ready because I thought I should. This has enabled me to focus on what I am doing now — teaching — and know that what I am doing is the best thing for me personally and professionally. The result: I will be a better teacher, colleague, and partner. I see no reason to sacrifice those three things just to certify myself as a competent researcher with a high-end set of professionalized skills. At least not yet.

As adjuncts, we often have little time or contact with other folks in our department. While it is more likely that we will see our tenured colleagues — after all, they are paid to be there most of the time — some of the most useful and meaningful relationships we can cultivate are with other adjuncts. Unless you spend a lot of extra time on campus or have a large load, it is unlikely that you will have much contact with many of your part-time peers. If you are a go-getter, then you might meet some of your colleagues at department meetings. Aside from hallway quick-chats, there’s rarely time, space, or resources allocated to adjuncts to mentor, support, or help one another.

Professionally, I am not sure that I want an institution to determine the nature of my relationships with my colleagues. I prefer to locate persons I want to talk to, share with, and learn from and move on from there. If we were tenured, we would see our colleagues more, and the socialization and professionalization process would occur naturally. Instead, we must go out of our way in order to create situations where we can socialize with our peers. When done well, they can be very useful. And, meeting colleagues and knowing peers are essential to mental and professional health.

Having a few pints of beer or cups of coffee with a colleague does wonders for my mental health. Usually I learn that my colleagues are having or have had worse students/situations than I have. This does not mean that I take pleasure in their pain. Instead, it shows me that even though I thought I had it bad, it was not as bad as it could have been. Their experiences often work to give me a more balanced perspective. In this same vein, I try to learn from other people’s bad experiences: what to do and not do — or say — in terms of handling students, administration, and so on. To be fair, I try and share what I have learned from my own experiences so that they can avoid my mistakes.

It is often in the midst of problem solving or commiserating that bonding takes place. The adjuncts I trust most are those who have not only helped me out by giving me great advice, but those people who have listened to me and then shared their own experiences. And then we kept our mouths shut. Once I know people have the ability to be discrete, and they choose to be discrete, I open up to them more than I do most. I not only trust them, I know that they are unlikely to cause problems for me professionally. Instead, they become an asset: someone I can talk to and engage with as a peer for reflection and consideration instead of a competitor for a low-paying position. Hopefully, I fill a similar role for them. A workplace can be much easier to handle when you know you can count on one or two key people.

At work — as in life — people like to talk. Much talk is harmless. A slipped confidence or intentional revelation can destroy a career. As adjuncts, we have no job security and that means we work at the whim of the department. Letting our lips flap a bit too much runs us the risk of losing work. As such, socializing with adjunct colleagues is a great way to learn who is and who is not discrete. The best way to tell who talks and who remains discrete is to watch and listen. The people I trust most do exactly the same thing. Once you establish confidence with a peer, it usually results in a more honest and open discussion of classes, workplaces, and so on.

Honest discussion helps me because it relieves tension, lets me know that I am not alone, and helps me determine if my perceptions are off base. Often, the discussions help me realize how skewed or off my observations may be — especially if I’ve not been around very long. This kind of feedback can be vital for understanding departmental decisions or unspoken tensions between personalities. Collegial chats help me get more centered before I risk making a gaffe.

Socializing with part-time peers is a great way to get a sense of the lay of the departmental land and who the personalities are in the department. This is a job, after all, and these are our co-workers. It’s essential to know what the people are like. Additionally, socializing is a good way to gather information and establish an intellectual and pedagogical safety net so that we do not feel lost, alone, or isolated.

When teaching as a newbie part-timer in composition, it is hard to know when you are flailing. Well, sometimes. Other times, failures are down right obvious and glow so brightly in neon that nobody can ignore them. Yeah. While these incidents may make impressive or useful anecdotes in the future, they are never fun to endure. Epic failures aside, how can we as newbie instructors recover from our failures? How do we deal with them? Hopefully, my recent flailings can assist you in avoiding similar problems.

This past term, in one class in particular, I flailed hard. I got distracted, I was not interested in the material, and I was doing minimal preparation. In the class, I was on cruise control and just not paying much attention. And yet, somehow, the class continued. As the situation continued, no administrative hit squads came after me, no pedagogical police showed up, and no entity emerged from my conscience to thug me back into teaching properly. The only indications of any problems were disciplinary issues — and only some of them were a result of my inattention. Finally, as I was moaning one day, my partner asked me what the heck I was doing, and I realized how off track I had gone. I was stunned. It seemed impossible that I could have strayed so far so quickly. I scrambled, and I did my best to make sure the impact on my students was minimized.

Flailing like this was a wake up call. Honestly, I never thought it would or could happen to me. After all, I was new and so excited about teaching that I could never lose track of my classes. However, I did. And quickly. Once I realized what happened, I had many options. Of course I set my pedagogical guilt cop loose and beat myself up for a bit. While it placated my need to feel badly, it did nothing for the students. I had to rapidly evaluate what went wrong. Then, I needed to do some quick work in the classroom to make sure my students were prepared for their upcoming exams. Frankly, it is easier to feel guilty than it is to work on resolving the problem. Once I started to repair the damage, it dawned on me just how much material I had forgotten about. I had to prioritize my solutions. I also realized that there really is no way to get bored with a class — there is simply too much to get done. However, if you do not want to be there or want to do other things, it is easy to find reasons to not do the work.

One of the main benefits of this experience was that I was able to see afresh just how much material I must cover in my courses. Secondly, because I was forced to prioritize and cut some material in order to best prepare my students, I had to determine what I thought was the most important information and skills for them to grasp and develop. This shaped how I will teach the class in the future. The time pressure also improved my sense of how the class should be structured and when and how I should start preparing my students for their exams.

The most useful thing to do is figure out why you flailed. I know that already: I got completely and totally distracted. In a way, I am glad that this happened to me so early in my career. Instead of deluding myself by thinking that my personality and pedagogy are impervious to distraction, I have now confirmed that they are very susceptible. As such, I can structure my work, my class preparation, and my teaching strategies to directly deal with and compensate for my shortcomings. Rather than deny that we have problems or issues with our teaching, it is best to admit and acknowledge them. Then, make important, ethical, and effective moves to compensate for our weaknesses. If we do nothing, it is only a matter of time before we short our selves and our students again.

It stinks to realize you’ve done less than your best. It is even worse, however, to repeat the mistake and not improve your teaching craft. While it is humbling in many ways, it is also very educational. To not learn from my mistakes as I expect my students to learn from theirs would be an unreasonable double standard.

Several weeks ago, two colleagues at my community college organized a meeting between tenured faculty and adjuncts. The purpose: give adjuncts conducting job searches relevant and useful advice so their searches will be more successful. As an adjunct, this is exactly the kind of information that I desire and seek. Not only does it help me in my quest for work outside of my current institution, it helps me understand the culture and expectations of where I work.

The tenured folks raised many important and useful points. However, I am going to focus on just three. First, do not try to spin the committee when they are interviewing you. If you do not know the answer or have one, say so. Do not pretend to know the answer. They will be able to tell that you are blowing smoke. The last thing any person or committee wants in a colleague is someone who can’t admit that they do not know something. And if that knowledge is essential for the position, and you do not have it, you probably shouldn’t get that job. If you need time to compose an intelligent answer, ask for a moment. Then, be silent while you get yourself together — apparently many job candidates chatter while trying to come up with answers. And, from what several colleagues have said, this space-filling chatter weakened the candidates’ chances.

In addition to making sure that what you say is meaningful, it is wise to prove your interest in, understanding of, and participation with shared governance. Investment in shared governance was important to almost all of the tenured faculty. They emphasized how large a role shared governance plays in the community college, both in terms of how the college operates as well as how much time it requires of tenured faculty members. Apparently, many applicants are unaware of just how much time tenured faculty are expected to give to the institution through service to committees and governance.

The last point that the faculty emphasized was being sincere and genuine. As several asserted, when looking for work it is easy to act, say, or do things that you think will play well and get you a position but that you, as an instructor, do not necessarily believe in or support. If you are hired, your colleagues and peers will expect you to live up to what you promised and how you presented yourself during the interview process. As such, it is better to be honest and genuine so the committee will know who you really are. They are intending to hire you as a colleague who will work with them for a decade or three. The last way to start off that relationship is under false pretenses. Additionally, you are cheating yourself if you do not show who you truly are. It is not comfortable attempting to be who others want you to be; rather, show them what you can offer and you will likely perform better and receive special job offers.

Caveat: Every community college and university hiring committee has a different culture and set of expectations. Therefore, it is goofy to believe that one system’s standards or expectations will fully apply in another situation. Please keep this in mind! And, while this seems obvious, it is worth repeating!

Once again, Dr. David Parry has agreed to share his tech wisdom with Adjunct Advice. Rather than going for a broad sense of technology, this interview focuses exclusively on the effective and efficient use of RSS feeds. As this interview demonstrates, RSS is much easier to use and more powerful when you organize your feeds. In addition to this interview, I suggest you read David’s own article about RSS feeds here.

Dr. David Perry is an Assistant Professor of Emerging Media at the University of Texas in Dallas.

RSS feeds seem like a great tool, but I find myself never having enough time to read them. I suspect I have sloppy RSS habits. Can you offer any secrets to effective RSS feed management (just like file management)?

I think we should probably distinguish between two things here for the sake of understanding how I use feeds: one is the practice of collecting and organizing feeds; the second is the process of reading these feeds. Now clearly the first is always with an eye towards the later, that is I organize them in such a way as to facilitate reading practices, but for the sake of answering these questions it is probably useful to keep them separate.

I currently subscribe to about 230 feeds, plus or minus depending on what you count and don’t count, but regardless it is crucial for me to keep them organized in a way that allows me to later process them. I have two primary grouping strategies. The first is to group feeds by category, and I place similar feeds in a folder which distinguishes the content of those feeds. So, for example, I have a folder labeled “News.” In this folder I have the feed from CNN (headline), The New York Times (headline), BBC (world), Newsvine, OhmyNews, and the Dallas Morning News (I live in Dallas). This gets me all of the feeds that are “news” related grouped together. Below that is a folder titled “Politics;” here I subscribe to Crooks and Liars, ThinkProgress, The Daily Kos, Red State, and a few others. Notice the editorials are not here; that is, I also subscribe to Salon and the NYTimes Editorial section. These are in a third folder (more on that in a moment). I also have folders for “Sports,” “Apple (computer not fruit),” “Education,” “Education Tech,” . . . you get the idea.

Now I crudely sort them by their time importance. This is why news is at the top: everyday I want to check these feeds; I consider it my reading the morning paper. If I don’t get to the feeds on “Running” for a particular day no big deal the information will keep, but the news I want to make sure to pay attention to. These are also the feeds, generally speaking, which receive the highest number of updates. This is also the reason that news editorials are in a different folder: they often require a different attention span and are not as timely as the news, so if I don’t get to them on a given day I can look at them the next day. They also tend to be updated less frequently so they don’t build up.

This sorting technique allows me to read feeds from one given subject area at a time, rather than having one giant miscellaneous pile of information, and I can read what is relevant to what I am dong at that moment, or my frame of mind. Or, conversely if I need a break, I can read just the feeds that I subscribe to for entertainment, like Digg Videos or running Web sites.

There is also a folder for student blogs, so I can read them all at once, and a folder for blogs I am trying out. When I run across a blog that looks like I might be interested in, I subscribe and give it a “trial period,” deciding if I want to move it to a more permanent folder. This helps me to keep the signal to noise ratio in favor of signal.

One other thing you can do rather than subscribe to a host of sites that have information that interests you, is find one site that collects in one place all of the best posts from various sites. For example rather than subscribe to four or five tech sites, you can just subscribe to Techme, or instead of subscribing to ten different news organizations, just try Newsvine.

How do you use RSS feeds to help you in your professional development (in terms of publications and conferences)? General suggestions and/or strategies would be great!

One key way is what I already mentioned above, that is I group feeds into folders that have relevant professional content, and set aside time to read them in the same way I would for trade publications.

You can also subscribe to the feeds of many journals (often through Project Muse). This way when a new issue comes out you get a notice in your RSS reader. Again it helps to have all of these grouped in a folder for easy reading.

Also when I am interested in a particular subject, say I am in the research phase of a particular project, I will do a great deal of research and subscribe to a whole host of blogs that engage in the subject matter. (Right now I have one folder that is dedicated to Wikipedia.) This gives me a sense of what is currently going on. Incidentally, I tell students to adopt this strategy as well. If, for example, they are taking a class on politics and American history, subscribing to a few blogs (getting good ones can be the key here) will give them a deeper understanding of the field and help them to engage better with the material.

Particularly in my field, many of the calls for papers, conference information, grant announcements etc., are published online in a way you can subscribe to the feeds. For example, HASTAC and Grand Text Auto have this type of information for me, so reading these sites frequently can be crucial to keeping up with what is going on, and RSS is key to this regard.

One other note, you can push email through RSS. This becomes another way to keep up to date on relevant information and stay in control instead of getting overwhelmed. Let’s say, for example, you subscribe to the H-Net email lists in your relevant field. Send these to RSS rather than email. I find I am far more likely to deal with them in that context than when they clog up my inbox—I don’t want group emails/notifications in my inbox.

What do you believe is the most under-utilized aspect of RSS feeds?

Because of the format of the information you can get just about anything off RSS. Think of it this way, if there is something you want to be “updated” on there is probably a way to get this via RSS. Weather. Traffic Updates. Community Events. Real Estate. I have been contemplating buying a new car for awhile now, two models in particular, and so I subscribe to those particular feeds through Craigslist. Now anytime someone puts one of these two models on sale via Craigslist I get a notice in my RSS reader. This way I have a sense of what the market value is, and should a great deal come up I get a notice. It is like having your own personal classifieds. RSS is a wonderful tool for sorting information, again managing that signal to noise ratio.

One other really useful feature is using RSS to monitor comments. You can subscribe just to the comment section of a specific post. This way you are updated when someone adds to the conversation rather than having to frequently visit a site to see if someone else has added to the post.

How can low-tech people make the most of RSS feeds in a quick and easy way?

First, if you are still a bit confused about how RSS works, check out this video from the Common Craft Show. Next get a reader, for ease of use you might check out Google Reader (personally I prefer having a separate application for RSS feeds but Google Reader is a good start with an easy to use interface and tutorial videos). Next pick a few areas you constantly read about on the web. Let’s say you are a history professor who likes to read about sports and cooking, make three folders (history, sports, cooking) and subscribe to blogs in each area. Now instead of going to check those sites, go to your reader. You will be surprised how much this will change the way you interact with the network of information.

A few other things to keep in mind:

My feeds are fluid and I treat them this way. A couple of months ago when political unrest was occurring in Burma I added a bunch of feeds to help keep me informed on the situation. If a feed isn’t productive for you (you find yourself deleting the updates all the time) just unsubscribe. But also keep in mind you can subscribe to a feed for that once-a-month important update and delete the other 20 posts for the month.

Don’t stress about reading everything. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 items I haven’t yet read in my feed reader. No big deal — I get to them when I get to them. When I come back from two or three days away I often wholesale delete certain folders. And in that regard you can really often just scan a whole folder to see if their is anything that interests you rather than carefully looking at each entry.

Finally, use the mark for later feature. This is different for each reader, mine is called flagging, I think Google Reader allows you to star posts. Either way, this feature lets you mark certain posts to go back to at a later time and date and handle in depth.

Dr. Scott Warnock teaches composition at Drexel University. When I put out a call for instructors who have taught composition with sports themes, he answered. Fortunately, he has been kind enough to answer questions about this specific approach to teaching composition.

What first interested you in teaching a sports-themed composition course?

One of the keys to a successful writing class — especially a first-year writing class — is to help students find writing topics that are interesting and relevant to them. Of course, many students are interested in sports. I thought that focusing a writing class on sports would create the kind of engagement that would allow students to improve their writing; they would be able to work on assignment topics of interest to them, and thus they would be more invested in their written work in the course.

How did your students and colleagues initially react to the idea?

Interesting question. I initially proposed this idea when I was in the PhD program at Temple. People were enthusiastic because they understood what I was trying to accomplish. I first actually taught a sports-themed course at Penn State Lehigh Valley. Again, colleagues were supportive. I say this question is “interesting” because I have experienced higher ed’s unfriendliness toward sports. While my colleagues at both institutions were helpful and enthusiastic about the course, I’ve had a different response from others. It’s pretty clear just by looking at me that I’m a “jock.” This has actually been a point of mild bias in higher ed. I remember as an undergrad I strolled in to the English department office to apply for an honors thesis. Someone in the office looked at me — I had a buzz haircut and I was carrying a pair of cleats—smiled condescendingly and said, “You know, you have to have pretty good grades for that.” I’ve run into a number of similar situations throughout my career — it’s as if some people don’t take me seriously at first because I look like I can throw a football. The reason I bring this up is that I think the class I devised received support because I had great colleagues who were open-minded about the importance of audience, purpose, and relevance. Also, I made it clear that I wasn’t framing a class around a bunch of kids with their feet up on the desk reading the USA Today sports pages. Still, I think that if you are going to create a sports-themed class, you should be ready for some resistance from those who think sports is below academic inquiry.

What methods do you use in your own work, training, and self-reflection to parallel your teaching with coaching?

The first line of my teaching philosophy statement says that I compare my teaching with coaching. That’s the overarching teaching metaphor for me: Coaching. I think the model of “coach” is exactly what I strive for as a teacher (and parent). I believe in close engagement with my students. I believe that you must build mutual trust. I believe that what’s best for students is not always what they want to do, and your job is motivate them to accomplish such tasks. I believe in a lot of positive feedback. I believe in practice. I also believe that the people I work with must come to our relationship ready to work and that they must bring a sense of engagement if we are to work together successfully. (Incidentally, I’m reading a book right now titled Coach, edited by Andrew Blauner.)

Has this approach changed your relationship with student-athletes and non-athletes in your classes?

Sometimes I think my coaching mentality — which I overtly state on the first day of class — allows me to connect with athletes a little more effectively than I might otherwise. However, I also think that the approach has helped me with non-athletes. To me, “coaching” as a teacher is not sports-centered; instead, it’s centered on working closely with your students, caring about their progress, and encouraging them at every step of the way. Is there a risk that some students might not like that metaphor? I suppose so. However, I think students generally appreciate the “coaching” I provide for them during a term.

What has most surprised you about teaching a sports-themed class?

That’s easy. When I taught the course at Penn State — wouldn’t you know it? — all of the students were non-sports people! It was an honors seminar filled with these very bright skeptics who weren’t part of their schools’ athletic culture. In a way, that actually worked well, because the course was designed as a critique of sports. We used Eitzen’s Sport in Contemporary Society, which contains some challenging readings about critical approaches to sports. I had envisioned the course as working because I could channel students’ love of sports into their writing, and I hadn’t thought I would have a room full of people who view Super Bowl Sunday as a night to get a good seat at a restaurant.

Do you see a future in sports-themed composition classes, or do you think they will remain a niche?

Sports are a big deal in our society, and I think — and many have been far more articulate and thoughtful than I could possibly be here about this topic — that they provide a useful window into a variety of cultural issues: gender, class, race, competition, big business, tradition, camaraderie, health, celebrity, human achievement, etc. I think we can use the vehicle of sports to help students write about deep issues in a way that fires their interest.

What do you think teaching a sports-related composition class can offer a newer instructor or adjunct?

I think in a composition course that it’s important to connect with your students. A sports-themed course could get students excited from day one, and that can make the job of helping these students do that highly tricky thing — improve their writing — much easier, especially for a new teacher.

Last spring, two of my colleagues taught English in China. Normally, I think of teaching English overseas as either the purview of recent undergraduates or experienced TESL professionals. Given these assumptions, I was a bit surprised at my colleagues’ decision to go overseas. Upon their return, they agreed to an interview about their experiences. What Adria and Jamie discuss in this interview sheds light on similarities between teaching overseas and in the US and offers another option for adjuncts looking to add variety to their experience and their vitae while solidifying their praxis.

How long have you been teaching and where?

ADRIA: I’ve been teaching at College of the Redwoods since fall 2002, and fall semesters at Humboldt State University since 2002.

JAMIE: I’ve been teaching at College of the Redwoods since fall 2004, and fall semesters at Humboldt State since fall 2006.

Where did you earn your degrees?

ADRIA: I received both from Humboldt State University.

JAMIE: I received degrees from Humboldt State University and University of California, Davis.

What are the degrees?

ADRIA: I have a BA in English and an MA in Teaching Writing.

JAMIE: I have a BA in English and an MA in Teaching Writing and Literature. I also have a BS in Biology.

How did you first learn of the program in China and why did you go?

ADRIA: I was contacted by the Chair of the English Department at HSU, who was contacted by the Chair of the World Languages and Cultures Department. The latter was looking for qualified instructors to teach as part of a 1-2-1 exchange program between HSU and XISU (Xi’an International Studies University) in Xi’an, China. I was there for one semester, last spring.

JAMIE: Same here.

ADRIA: I went because traveling, especially to China, is something that had interested me for a long time, and teaching in China would allow me to both develop professionally and explore the country and culture. Being an adjunct, I felt I had a unique opportunity—it can be easier for us to take a semester off (as we don’t often have as many obligations to our institutions as our full-time counterparts), and our adjunct status means we don’t typically have the money to take vacations abroad. I was lucky in that my partner is also an adjunct instructor, so we were both in a position to consider the opportunity. For all of these reasons, I said “Why not?”

JAMIE: As an adjunct, I was able to step away from my current institution with their blessing, which made the decision that much easier. And, like Adria, the prospect of not only visiting China, but living and working there for a stretch of time to really get that cultural immersion experience was very appealing. China is a country that is experiencing major changes both economically and culturally, so it was exciting to get the chance to see this firsthand. Plus, because it was a faculty exchange program, we knew that we would have the full support of an American university while we there.

How did teaching composition here in the US prepare for teaching in China?

ADRIA: While I was in China, I taught “Reading and American Popular Culture” and “Oral English,” so I wasn’t doing what I normally do, which is teaching composition. Of course, I teach reading and communication in the writing class every day, but I wasn’t wholly prepared to teach these in as much depth as I would be expected in China. On the other hand, I was a part of the curriculum development committee for this program (As this was a new program at HSU, and we were part of the first group to go, we got to help design the courses.), and so I was able to use my knowledge of developmental writers to help in that regard.

JAMIE: Just having some experience in the classroom over the last few years has given me the skills and confidence to teach in any situation, no matter how different or difficult. I have taught classes one and two levels below the college level, and because of the diverse needs of such students, these courses in particular helped to prepare me for this experience.

What were the most notable differences between teaching here as a part-timer and in China?

ADRIA: I teach part-time at two different schools here, which means I have a wonderful mix of students, an aspect of my job I enjoy very much. A notable thing for me, therefore, was the fact that in China, the student population is much less diverse, and beyond just race of course. China has universities with young students just out of high school but no community colleges, which we traditionally associate with economically and ethnically diverse students, students with varying educational backgrounds, and emphases on both degrees and certificate programs. The students I taught in China represented the same cross section of society, and as XISU was a Humanities university, the students largely had the same goals, a four-year Humanities degree. I wouldn’t consider this a negative by any means, just different.

JAMIE: Here in the states, I teach various levels of composition. Such classes focus on developing students’ reading and writing skills. However, most Chinese universities assign oral English classes to native English speakers because it is expensive to hire such teachers. Chinese universities believe it is more important to have a native English speaker teaching oral classes than reading and writing classes. We were lucky in that because we were a part of a special program, we were able to teach one class focusing on reading and writing, but to fill our teaching schedule, we were assigned oral English classes.

Did your adjunct teaching experience inform your work in China? How?

ADRIA: Like many adjuncts teaching developmental courses, I have quite a few under-prepared students in my writing classes. I found in teaching these students that two of the most helpful things I can do for them is to be as clear and as organized as possible. Teaching in China, I felt it important to bring those skills with me. In addition, being an adjunct means that I teach a variety of courses, depending on the needs of the department; having taught so many different levels of composition over the years made me confident in my ability to take on yet another teaching situation.

JAMIE: Part of adjunct teaching, unfortunately, is being offered teaching assignments at the last minute. When this happens, we are forced to plan and adapt to new circumstances quickly. This skill helped me immensely when we went over to China since we did not know what we were going to be teaching until we got over there, and we didn’t get our full teaching schedule until the day before classes were set to begin. Also, as Adria mentioned, I believe my work at the developmental level allowed me to be more aware and able to teach students who don’t have that level of writing and reading skill we expect from a student entering college. Because these students were second language students and had been schooled in a very different system, I had to determine very quickly how I would best serve these students in developing their literacy skills.

Now that you are back in the US, how are you able to use your teaching experiences in China to benefit your current students?

ADRIA: Well, as I mentioned above, I taught a reading course, which has helped improve my teaching of reading now that I’ve returned. As any of us who teach developmental students know, often their reading skills are below, sometimes well below, college level. In the past I felt ill-equipped to teach reading, as most of my training and education focused on writing. So that was a tremendous learning experience, and while I’m not a reading expert now, I’ve improved considerably, and I feel that is a positive thing.

JAMIE: My China experience comes up in my classes once in a while. I am currently teaching a composition course with an education theme, and I was able to share my experiences with my students as we discussed and analyzed the educational system in our country. By comparing and contrasting the two systems, students were better able to understand what is particular to the US system and helped to inform their own position on a variety of issues within this theme. Also, because I taught a course on style in China, I was able to explore sentence-level writing concerns in greater depth than I had ever done in any of my previous courses in the US. I was then able to bring back some of these experiences to better inform how I taught this subject in my composition courses when I returned.

For other adjuncts or new teachers looking at going overseas, what advice can you offer?

ADRIA: Be flexible, willing to adapt. There are a thousand little things that you won’t be able to anticipate when you’re living and teaching in another country, so it’s best to have an adventurous spirit about the whole thing. It was tough at times for someone like me to take my own advice. I, and many teachers like me, are organized, planning types, so letting go of structure and predictability can be a challenge. It was worth it, though, professionally and personally—I am definitely grateful for having taken advantage of the opportunity.

JAMIE: I agree; the ability to take what you know and adapt it to meet the needs of the university and your students is essential. Such an attitude will also help you as you familiarize yourself to a new culture. Also, be sure to take with you a bundle of your favorite and most trusted reference and text books. Finding effective teaching materials in English for English can be tough.