27, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 13-14
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An Alternative Lesson Plan: Preparing to Teach in a Community College
Donna M. Wilson
GRADUATE degree programs prepare students for academic careers by allowing them to pursue thorough and specialized investigations in a variety of subject area. Explorations in literary studies help students identify themselves as specialists in, say, nineteenth-century, medieval, or contemporary literature; likewise, students can distinguish themselves as historical, applied, or theoretical linguists. By specializing, students seek to improve their chances of meeting the specific requirements mentioned in postsecondary job listings.
In a perfect world university graduate preparation would be enough to secure a candidate employment. But the realities of today's job market dictate that some candidates, however well prepared, will not be able to find a tenure-track position in a four-year college or university. If it is not enough to define themselves as linguists or as nineteenth-century or peninsular literature specialists, then how might graduate students outline their qualifications and direct their job searches?
Because graduate preparation often involves a direct, linear plan aimed at placing students in four-year institutions, graduate programs often overlook the smaller and more comprehensive institutions on the peripheries of American higher education. Within the past three decades, public community college systems have grown, but few graduate students seem to think about them as career options.
Once viewed as extensions of public school systems, two-year colleges have changed their curricula during the past twenty-five years to embrace both academic transfer and occupational programs. The curriculum base has shifted from liberal studies offering to an emphasis on career training and occupational certificates. Although credits for many of these courses is transferable to four-year institutions across the United States, some program content, especially within the occupational units, is based on local community and employer demand.
Two-year colleges typically offer the associate's degree in liberal arts, business, or science. They range in size from multicampus facilities in urban areas to smaller institutions with fewer than two thousand students. Their philosophies are as diverse as their sizes and constituencies, but collectively and institutionally they share an emphasis on teaching. Those who choose to teach in two-year colleges have at heart a desire to see another person grow personally and intellectually. They categorize themselves not as linguists or as eighteenth-century specialists but as teachers. Perhaps that self-perception is what allows them to turn ugly duckling into swans.
The typical two-year-college curriculum is comprehensive, providing transfer curriculum ranges from remedial through second-year, personal enrichment programs, customized training, and so forth. Particularly in foreign language study, course work commencing at 101 and ending at 203 is the standard bill of fare. In second-year (intermediate-level) study some introduction to literature is customary, as is exploration of basic linguistic and phonetic problem areas. Detailed investigations into Borges, Camus, or Goethe are not offered because they do not provide the general and comprehensive focus that students need if they want to transfer to a four-year institution, where specific classes on literature are part of the major or minor. Class size in beginning-level courses may be daunting: thirty to thirty-five students a class. Course work and pedagogy may stress basics, involving full attention, to el, la, hablar , and comer and somewhat less to the cause-and-effect relations of the Spanish subjunctive. The college's distribution requirements may include supplemental classes in the humanities to explore culture or a separate class in history or political science.
Because they are commuter campuses with open-door policies, most two-year colleges attract nontraditional students. In 1990, 57% of community-college students were female and 37% were over thirty years old (Dougherty 3–4). Because of their comprehensive mission and philosophy, community colleges increasingly serve to meet basic needs in reading, writing, and quantitative skills. Many offer remediation of knowledge not acquired in high school. The gap between high school study and curriculum required for the associate's degree is often bridged by below-level-100 courses in basic skills.
Faculty recruitment at two-year colleges takes into account the comprehensive focus of these institutions and the needs of their students. Community-college faculty members must know how to teach. In foreign languages two-year colleges seek candidates with experience in applied linguistics and dealing with a variety of learning styles. Applicants for most full-time positions should have at least a master's degree, but preference may be given to a PhD with solid teaching experience. Applicants able to serve a general audience are preferred over those with specialized backgrounds, and flexibility and an ability to teach in more than one language are desirable: frequent job vacancies may require a faculty member to teach beginning-level courses in several languages.
Common full-time teaching loads include at least three five-credit classes (depending on local contract agreements) and class sections of twenty-eight to thirty-five students. Most classes meet daily for fifty minutes and are scheduled between 8:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. Daily office hours are required of full-time faculty members. The work-load can be emotionally taxing, especially as more and more students enter college unprepared for college-level work. Salaries continue to lag behind those at four-year institutions and in some regions may be less than those at secondary public schools. In addition, faculty members must deal with the misconceptions of their colleagues at four-year institutions regarding the missions, students, and faculty preparation and development at two-year colleges.
Why do community-college faculty members choose to take on such and intimidating workload? Because they understand that they make a difference in people's lives. They share a commitment to teaching and a pride in their work. They experience relatively few political, territorial feuds; instead, they focus their energies on their roles as instructors, advisers, and mentors.
If interested graduate students are to become viable candidates for community-college positions, graduate-level tenured faculty members must develop apprenticeship programs for teaching assistants. Graduate students are colleagues, and they are the future of the profession. When the profession promotes a positive pedagogical environment, everyone wins: graduate faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students, who benefit from a good mentoring program.
Perhaps an overriding requirement for teaching in the community colleges involves not lesson plans or learning strategies but individual motivation: a faculty member's goal orientation, commitment, integral perception, positive attitude, and definition of rewards within the system (e.g., loving teaching, seeing work pay off, watching a face light up with understanding when a student masters a new concept or skill). Two-year-college faculty members must be active listeners, empathetic and objective. Intellectually, they must relate well to all kinds of people, they must have a bank of teaching strategies and exceptional knowledge, and they must be able to improvise innovatively (Roueche and Baker).
Students who believe this description fits them and who might want to work in this area should consider an alternative lesson plan as they chart their professional courses. Community colleges are roads to fulfilling careers in America's higher education system.
The author is Chair of the Arts and Humanities Division and Professor of Spanish at Highline Community College, Washington. This article is based on her presentation at ADFL Seminar West, 22–24 June 1995, in Eugene, Oregon.
Dougherty, Kevin J. The Contradictory College: The Conflicting Origins, Impacts, and Futures of the Community College. Albany: State U of New York P, 1994.
Roueche, John E., and George A. Baker III. Access and Excellence: The Open Door College. Washington: Community College P, 1987.
© 1996 by the Association of Departments of Foreign Languages. All Rights Reserved.
ADFL Bulletin 27, no. 3 (Spring 1996): 13-14 |
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