by Jeff Crosby, Aug 10, 2009

I managed to finish college at age 40. By my mid-fifties, I was back to school. I was a desperate man. Thirty years of busting my hump in the labor movement, and we are weaker than when I first punched in at General Electric Co. I started work as a second shift grinder in February 1979. Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister of Great Britain in May that year, and Ronald Reagan was elected president in November. So you get the picture—my life in the labor movement has coincided precisely with the neoliberal assault. I’m looking for some help.

The master’s degree in union leadership and administration (ULA) at the University of Massachusetts (UMass) has been great. Demanding, expert teachers. Serious, fellow union students. Respect for each other regardless of union or politics—a self-defined safe space for those searching for answers.  And did I mention the books? 

Things took a surprising turn, though, when I was asked to teach an undergraduate class. They needed someone to fill in as an “adjunct” professor. I was seen as a “practitioner” expected to have some expertise in the field of instruction, not a regular professor.  I had thought of teaching, maybe a few years down the road.  This was now. 

“You’ll be great,” everyone told me.  Did they know something I didn’t? I was nervous but, as it turned out, not nervous enough.

I spent most of the summer and fall getting the syllabus ready for the “Survey of Work and Labor in America.” When I stepped into the classroom in January, preparing classes eliminated all other activities—like writing these blog articles—except my regular union responsibilities. I spent between 10 hours and 16 hours a week sweating out my lectures. I’m a union leader who has given a thousand speeches, but this was a very different art form. “Don’t worry,” the director told me.  “It gets easier the third or fourth year.”  So how do you make it to the third year?

I drank some other professor’s coffee. I parked in the wrong parking lot. I took a vacation day to get instruction on a class blog from the Office of Information Technology (OIT).  When the trainer brought up the program, she stared at it blankly.  A new program had been installed the previous Friday.  “Sorry,” she told me apologetically. ”I’m an adjunct, too. No one told me.”

My son and daughter showed me how to set up a PowerPoint show. The computer in the “smart” classroom was supported by a different IT group than the OIT—you had to apply for a key from the provost’s office. The wonderful ULA staff helped me figure it all out.

I sought advice from the experienced teachers. ”Never use PowerPoints, it interferes with the connection with the students.” (I decided that something broke the connection with the guy sleeping in the 12th row of the stadium-style classroom, but it probably wasn’t my PowerPoint.)  “I always use PowerPoints—no one can listen to you talk for an hour and fifteen minutes.” ”I use chalk and blackboard, period.” ”I always use a short film or something.” The class was at 9:30 a.m., the middle of the night for the typical undergrad. 

It was like fixing your car or raising your kids. Everyone had an opinion, but no one had the same opinion. I asked the law professor, “How are you supposed to know how to teach?  At GE, we wouldn’t put someone on a lathe without a break-in.” ”Shows which trade is respected in this world,” he replied.  If you don’t know what you don’t know, you can’t ask. And that went from the acceptable social norms of coffee-drinking to pedagogy.

After a two-hour drive from my home in Lynn, my first class was canceled due to snow. Snow? It looked to me like that ad for travel to Florida where a single cloud passes in front of the sun. In 30 years at GE, the plant had never closed. They didn’t even close during the Blizzard of ‘78. You just get to work as best you can.

      The program director called me and asked me for my CD.

      “What’s a CD?”

      “No, a CV.”

      “OK…what’s a CV?”

      “A Curriculum Vitae.”

      “OK…what’s a Curriculum Vitae?”

Turns out it’s a list of everything you’ve published, and my rather paltry compilation of articles sufficed.

My brother-in-law, Garret Virchik, teaches in the Boston public schools and is an editor of the AFT local union paper. When I whined about how hard teaching is, he howled. ”You’re not even teaching—the TAs are doing the teaching!” I promised not to make fun of teachers and their summer vacations—at least for a few weeks.

The teaching assistants did the heavy lifting. Most had taught before, and all were dedicated. They gave me feedback each week, corrected the papers and taught the sections where most discussion went on.  The ULA staff calmed my fears, helped me for the millionth time with the blog, etc.  I got through it alive—barely.

The pay came in handy, but if I figured it out by the hour, I was making half what a bench-hand makes in the factory where I work. And for me it was a side-job. Most adjuncts are professors who can’t get full-time work and hustle from school to school, without health care benefits or pensions. I have no idea how they make it. About 70 percent of college instruction today is by adjuncts. Just another cheap labor pool in today’s America. 

I read the final papers and took a deep breath. Somebody had been listening. The student evaluations (written by those who were still showing up) were positive. Nearly half of the students used the word “passionate” to describe my teaching, so they got that part. An accounting major—who understood mainstream economics better than I did—told me he got more out of my class than anything that semester. 

One student started volunteering for Jobs with Justice and planned to switch his major to labor studies. The department was happy with my work. 

Honestly, by May I was just relieved that it was over.

In July, I returned to ULA classes at UMass. At the “Suds and Duds” night, when ULA students traditionally wash some clothes and drink on Friday night, a cool thing happened. A young man introduced himself.  He had been in my class. We talked 15 or 20 minutes. He told me, “if I was a freshman, I would have hated you—it was so much reading!” (I’m thinking hmmm…60 percent of the class were freshmen and sophomores—I must have been a popular guy.) But since he was a graduating senior, he could handle it and learned a lot—and thanks, he added. We talked about what he was going to do next year. I think maybe I bought him a beer—or I should have.

As the weeks pass, it doesn’t look that hard anymore. I keep thinking about what I would do differently—and better.  I keep thinking about the student evaluations, and the kid I met in the bar at Suds and Duds.

And I keep thinking…maybe I’ll do it again sometime.

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