It took me about three years to get over my resistance to teaching at a community college. After the anxiety and genteel poverty of plowing through graduate school and the dissertation, I had sworn to myself that my student loan would be paid off by the salary I would earn from a position at a research university.
I was not about to hand over my teaching experience and scholarly expertise to the students at a two-year college. Once sequestered at a research university, I would, in my fantasy, have a relatively manageable schedule: I would be assigned a teaching load of two courses a semester. I would continue my research in African-American drama before 1930, attend conferences, hold intense discussions with my students, and eventually direct dissertations.
But what is the old saying? Man plans and God laughs. Such was my situation, nearly eight years ago now, when God laughed.
A friend had told me about the opening. I needed an income while I wrote my dissertation. The college, only 12 miles from my house, had a good reputation -- for a community college. It would be a temporary position, I thought. My colleagues who had ventured to universities in Ohio, Utah, and California would understand that my teaching at a community college was only for the money and only for a year or two. Besides, I was tired of being a gypsy scholar, teaching at various institutions to pay off that student loan. So I applied.
Because I didn't give much thought to what the search committee thought, I was calm and collegial during the interview. Consequently, the interview went very well. One interviewer, I remember, asked if I would leave the college once I had completed my doctorate. Because I needed money, I lied, assuring him that I had always dreamed of teaching at a community college. My plan, however, was to take those three letters -- Ph.D. -- to a "real" institution.
When the English department offered me the position, I immediately called several of my former graduate professors. Although wary and a bit protective of his junior scholar, my dissertation director advised me to consider my sense of the department and the people with whom I'd be working. He also suggested that I think about the quality of life I would have off campus. The main advantage was that I would be able to remain in Baltimore, a city in which I had become very comfortable. Searching for a university position would almost certainly mean I would have to move.
Other professors, however, told me directly that, if I took the position, I would have to explain at job interviews for university positions why I had been at a community college. Three years tops, I was told, was the length of time I should stay at a two-year college before I would be discredited by those working in my research area.
I had heard horror stories about working at a two-year college: I would live in servitude, teaching five sections of composition each semester to weak and indifferent students, sitting on numerous committees, and fighting off administrative interference in the classroom. I would have to be on campus five days a week, for nearly eight hours a day. My life would resemble that of an office worker.
It took only a year at the college to prove my expectations false. Although I did, and still do, have a five-five teaching load, it has not been the horror I anticipated. Granted, it can be intense, but I've become used to it. I've never been assigned to teach five composition courses in one semester; in fact, no one in our 20-member department has. Instead, I request, and usually get, my ideal schedule: two sections of developmental writing, two sections of writing about literature, and one section of descriptive grammar. No class has more than 20 to 25 students. Although I do spend a considerable amount of time marking papers, I am rarely on campus more than five hours a day.
My students also are not what I had expected. Some are the first in their families to attend college; some take two buses to campus after arranging caregivers for children and elderly parents. Most of them work to pay their tuition. If they drive, their cars are most often paid for with salaries from fairly menial jobs. Few are soft or spoiled by wealthy parents. Several are poor. Some are pregnant and unmarried; others have parents or partners in prison. One is a nightclub stripper. Academically they range from those who were Advanced Placement and honors students in high school to those who are still mystified by commas, let alone semicolons. Most are bright, good-natured, curious, and eager to learn. They seem driven in a way that I did not find in students at universities where I taught as an adjunct.
As would be the case with a position at any institution, I suppose, committees are a part of the package. I've found the ones I serve on, however, to be purposeful. Stuff does seem to happen as a result of committee work: students are tracked for their progress, outcomes assessments have been put into place, the Writing Center has been strengthened, the administrative structure has been revamped.
In the classroom, I do have autonomy. The department chairman does not monitor us; instead, he assumes that we are experienced teachers who know what we are doing. In disputes with students, he sides with the instructors.
In several ways, teaching at a community college differs from a university. We are hired for our ability to teach, to engage, to challenge -- not for our skill in research. When my book, Willis Richardson, Forgotten Father of African-American Drama (Greenwood Press, 1999) was published, the American Library Association wrote that it was an "outstanding academic book." My salary increase that year, however, was based more on my teaching evaluations and service than on my scholarly achievements.
Speaking of salary, mine is, I think, very good and comparable to that of colleagues at universities. I learned that I had been awarded tenure when a colleague congratulated me in the hallway one afternoon. I had no hand-wringing to endure.
My initial fear that my colleagues would be mediocre dissolved in my first few weeks at the college. Then and now, they are involved in completing dissertations, presenting papers at national conferences, and writing books and articles. I've found a truly collegial atmosphere, one without competition, departmental backbiting, and politics.
All is not rosy, of course. The college's library is not designed for scholarly research, at least not in early African-American drama. The Library of Congress is, however, only 35 miles away. Recently I was invited to be a member of a seminar at the National Endowment for the Humanities, where I will have a study carrel for 16 months. And I also have access to the library at the Johns Hopkins University, which is only seven blocks from my house.
Another downside is that I am not able to select the texts for my courses; instead, the department's textbook committee chooses five or so books from which we then choose our composition texts and literature anthologies. Occasionally, I would like to teach an upper-level elective course. Aside from the grammar course, all of the classes I teach are required, so at times students seem to resent having to take the class.
Perhaps the greatest conflict for me personally was how my colleagues in my discipline would regard me. Before my first semester at the community college, I had had a paper accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association. I attended the conference as a faculty member of the community college. I vividly recall covering my badge with a scarf during the entire conference. When some fellow researchers contacted me about what I was doing, I waffled, quickly dismissing my job at the college as temporary.
Over the past eight years, my dreams of teaching at a university have diminished. I realize that I am now, for the most part, out of that loop. But if by some miracle I were suddenly offered a teaching position at a research university, would I seize it?
I think not. At my community college, I realize daily, at times hourly, the immense importance of working with my students. I have learned that in many cases, they depend on the college to give them hope for a future, to add a structure and stability to their lives, to allow them to see that a change in their lives is possible. I see now that community colleges are not competing with universities or trying to be pseudo-universities; community colleges and universities are different animals, serving different populations and having different purposes.
It turns out I'm committed to the mission of community colleges and was all along. Through them, education is possible for those who might not otherwise attend college because of finances, poor academic performance, overlooked abilities by former instructors, and low self-confidence. Rather than theorize on race, class, and gender discrimination as I did in graduate seminars, I now encounter daily victims of it. Rather than leading a graduate seminar, as I had once dreamed of doing, I am in the trenches, and my work is valuable to me personally and, I believe, to those who enter my classes each day.
At times my students ask why I am teaching at a community college when I have a doctorate. That question troubled me for several years. Now I ask them, Why shouldn't I be?
