| I used to be a PT teacher at my local California community college, in the art department (graphic design, illustration, Photoshop, Illustrator, web design, etc.). I definitely heard from other teachers that some things were off (that seem like they could be related), but who knows if they were really related to the use of funds described here. I taught for just a couple of years and I was told that my classes were appreciated to some degree because I was a working professional in my field at the same time. Still, it was kind of annoying that some students only wanted that. When you have massively-high-achievers and middle-age homeless students with obvious struggles in the same class, the UMC people angling for their particular needs and also trying to min/max every class start to seem kind of off-putting. Not to blame anybody really, but it had a real feeling of inequity-upon-inequity to it. One couple really grilled me before a digital photography class, asking trivia questions about the topics we'd be covering and _how much I could teach them_, because they were trying to figure out _how much_ of a waste of time it would be. For a simple weekend class! They had nearly five figures worth of gear and a lot of expectations from a community college. I believe this is about when boot camps started to really pick up speed, and I could feel that tension building around traditional educational institutions. I do feel like there are pros/cons of "working professional teacher" vs. traditional FT college faculty for sure, which I didn't really understand before working there. Unfortunately it was also kind of a slow-motion "that's like a dollar an hour" [1] experience, and after reviewing the whole situation, with its variety of little pros and cons, decided to move all my energies back into my normal business. One thing I really miss though is how much I learned! My students thought _they_ were learning but holy smokes did I learn a lot from creating lessons, lesson plans, and websites for the courses. BTW tech-wise it was a lot of fun too. I gave extra credit points for trying non-Photoshop software, including some FOSS titles like GIMP, Bluefish, Inkscape, etc. Some of my students also got a bonus intro to web development with PHP, Python, and one was I believe a Rebol programmer who showed me his homebrew back-door VNC client with a one-click button palette to control any of his IT-company clients' computers. I also believe I came close to mastering the art of carrying my teacher's life on a USB disk. I had so many Portable-Apps downloads on there, even some servers I believe. 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv440W1xS44 |
As a former CC instructor and adjunct, I will say that these students have really helped my mindset as I continued through with my PhD. I had former forklift drivers, single mothers, etc. as students and it really made me think about activities like homework - the reality is that they did not have the same amount of time to work on homework like the traditional 18-25 demographic. Rather than shrugging my shoulders and saying "oh well", I would block out time in class so they could work with me available, started my YouTube channel to avoid minor emails, etc.
NC State is more a traditional 18-25 demo, but I've tried to carry on the same mindset. These are people with their own things going on in life. Since I allow attending lectures via the web stream, I've found out that I've had students attending while waiting to pick up their children from school.