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[the_myth]

You know, when I adjuncted, there came a point when I no longer could even get any work at a certain institution...

Because other adjuncts there were teaching 7 courses!

My home institution had internal policies in place preventing me from taking more than 2 positions there...and they were always canceled just before the semester started [thanks to administrative incompetence in scheduling].

I couldn't get enough courses to cover my rent, let alone continue in my grad program.

The whole system is broken.

[anthroma]

If it is at all possible, manage one's resources.  Teach just enough to survive, publish as much as you can with the remaining time, and write your way into a tenure-track job.  Too many people get caught in the overload trap.

Untenured

Thanks!  Sounds like sound advice I can follow...

[anthroid]

Well, here I am, late to the party.

Brooksc, I chair a combined department which includes anthropology.  You need to know a few things.  One, I perform national searches.  Occasionally the local adjunct might get the job but typically that's not the way it works.  Two, the fact that you are teaching cultural and archaeology when your specialty is biological is incredibly troubling.  This means that students are being horribly shortchanged in cultural for sure, and probably archaeology as well.  This means that when these students get to my upper division classes they're going to be far behind.  You don't have the expertise to be teaching those first two courses.  Whoever is hiring you is making a grave mistake.  I certainly would not hire you to teach cultural and, unless you could demonstrate clear archaeological experience, archaeology either.  Three, these major deficiencies are going to show up on your CV and make you look like a dilettante who has no expertise in anything beyond intro level courses. 

I certainly would not hire you in a tenure-track position unless you were publishing in your subfield in our discipline and teaching courses in the subfield.  You ought to be concentrating on developing courses within your area of expertise rather than doing what really sounds like a substandard job educating students in two of our discipline's four fields.  "Professors" who just follow along in the book and let students "work at their own pace" are indicating that they don't know the subject matter. 

I'm sorry to be so blunt but this situation really is appalling.  I do recognize it isn't your fault, really, but please:  concentrate on teaching what you know instead of winging it when you don't know something, particularly because you say you don't need the money.  Let someone with the right credentials take the courses in which you really have no expertise.  And I guarantee that you do not know cultural in any depth, just as I don't know biological.

[the_myth]

Anthroid brings up what I call the "warm body syndrome" in adjunct staffing.  Some admins will hire *anyone* willing to teach a course.  And many money-strapped adjuncts are more than willing to take the job.  I've sort of done it...

As a Communication grad student [with a varied background leading to that PhD program], I was offered several courses as an adjunct:  Principles of Journalism, PR Basics, Intro to Public Speaking.  I have zero background in those subfields.  But I was repeatedly offered those positions because they always had major staffing issues.  I had many peers who took those assignments and then fell flat on their faces.  On the other hand, some took to them like a duck to water, ultimately cultivating an extra area of expertise to teach in and as research.

Still, I took assignments where my BA in English benefited me: I taught an interdisciplinary How to Write a Research Paper class twice, and I taught 3 sections of a "Composition for Communication majors" course.  I was not trained in comp, but, just like many lit specialists, I taught myself the basics.  I also had experience with the basic comm components of the course, which is something few comp/lit people have.  It was a bear.  I wish I had never done it, but they routinely offered these sections to people with zero experience/background; I at least had some.

This is the dirty little secret of the adjuncting trend:  Many of us forced into adjuncting are perfectly qualified for some of the courses we teach, are moderately qualified for others, but there are many...MANY...of us who take what's offered and try to make lemonade out of oranges.  Amazingly, some people manage to do it, while others fall on their faces.

Even people who get TT jobs often get assigned classes they are not specialized in, so it's odd how some academicians have a hard-and-fast rule as to who is allowed to teach what while other schools don't seem to care much.

*shrug*

[anthroid]

Anthroid brings up what I call the "warm body syndrome" in adjunct staffing.  Some admins will hire *anyone* willing to teach a course.  And many money-strapped adjuncts are more than willing to take the job.  I've sort of done it...

As a Communication grad student [with a varied background leading to that PhD program], I was offered several courses as an adjunct:  Principles of Journalism, PR Basics, Intro to Public Speaking.  I have zero background in those subfields.  But I was repeatedly offered those positions because they always had major staffing issues.  I had many peers who took those assignments and then fell flat on their faces.  On the other hand, some took to them like a duck to water, ultimately cultivating an extra area of expertise to teach in and as research.

Still, I took assignments where my BA in English benefited me: I taught an interdisciplinary How to Write a Research Paper class twice, and I taught 3 sections of a "Composition for Communication majors" course.  I was not trained in comp, but, just like many lit specialists, I taught myself the basics.  I also had experience with the basic comm components of the course, which is something few comp/lit people have.  It was a bear.  I wish I had never done it, but they routinely offered these sections to people with zero experience/background; I at least had some.

This is the dirty little secret of the adjuncting trend:  Many of us forced into adjuncting are perfectly qualified for some of the courses we teach, are moderately qualified for others, but there are many...MANY...of us who take what's offered and try to make lemonade out of oranges.  Amazingly, some people manage to do it, while others fall on their faces.

Even people who get TT jobs often get assigned classes they are not specialized in, so it's odd how some academicians have a hard-and-fast rule as to who is allowed to teach what while other schools don't seem to care much.

*shrug*

Well, at least in anthropology, there is an incredibly specialized body of knowledge for the four fields that you don't often get in graduate school--you go into depth in your particular field but unless you make an effort (I did) you only know your field.  So biological anthropologists (who, by the way, can often be housed in biology or psychology departments, particularly if they are primatologists, and some archaeologists are housed in classics or history departments) hardly ever know any theory in cultural (for instance), and I sure as hell know NOTHING about archaeological methods other than the fact that they involve alot of dust.  As time goes on, a curious cultural anthropologist can learn quite enough evolutionary theory, for instance, to be able to teach a unit on human evolution, as I do.  There's no way in the world, though, that I would ever consider myself competent to teach a course in physical anthropology or an entire course on evolution.  Again, as we anthropologists hang around more we see the connections between our four fields and we treasure those connections, but we certainly are not knowledgeable enough to teach, and certainly not to publish, in all of those fields.

I get the sense that OP lives in a place where there are many anthropologists who are more qualified than the OP to teach outside hu's specialty.  OP should let that happen so that the students are getting what they pay for.

I do get what you're saying, The Myth, about the warm body problem.  I do my best to do more than that--much more than that, in fact.

[grasshopper]

Anthroid's right - anthropology subfields are worlds apart. It would be like getting someone with an English degree specializing in 20th Century American fiction to teach a course on Middle English poetry.

I didn't realize that teaching courses outside of the field of expertise would reflect negatively on a job applicant, though. I would have thought that it would demonstrate a breadth of knowledge in addition to the specialization.

Is this something particular to Anthropology? Or does it occur in other disciplines as well? Does it perhaps depend on how far removed the courses are from the field of specialization?

[anthroma]

Well, here I am, late to the party.

Brooksc, I chair a combined department which includes anthropology.  You need to know a few things.  One, I perform national searches.  Occasionally the local adjunct might get the job but typically that's not the way it works.  Two, the fact that you are teaching cultural and archaeology when your specialty is biological is incredibly troubling.  This means that students are being horribly shortchanged in cultural for sure, and probably archaeology as well.  This means that when these students get to my upper division classes they're going to be far behind.  You don't have the expertise to be teaching those first two courses.  Whoever is hiring you is making a grave mistake.  I certainly would not hire you to teach cultural and, unless you could demonstrate clear archaeological experience, archaeology either.  Three, these major deficiencies are going to show up on your CV and make you look like a dilettante who has no expertise in anything beyond intro level courses. 

I certainly would not hire you in a tenure-track position unless you were publishing in your subfield in our discipline and teaching courses in the subfield.  You ought to be concentrating on developing courses within your area of expertise rather than doing what really sounds like a substandard job educating students in two of our discipline's four fields.  "Professors" who just follow along in the book and let students "work at their own pace" are indicating that they don't know the subject matter. 

I'm sorry to be so blunt but this situation really is appalling.  I do recognize it isn't your fault, really, but please:  concentrate on teaching what you know instead of winging it when you don't know something, particularly because you say you don't need the money.  Let someone with the right credentials take the courses in which you really have no expertise.  And I guarantee that you do not know cultural in any depth, just as I don't know biological.

Thanks for the input...

I definitely understand what you are saying as I do not teach  any cultural courses... or linguistics for that matter (that would be a great disservice to the students and myself, if I attempted that one).

I teach general (which we should all be qualified to teach as anthropologists), physical, and archaeology (I am qualified to teach this as well).

The question wasn't am I qualified to teach... while I do wonder how much is to much... I do have enough knowledge to know that it would be damaging to attempt to teach a subject I have little knowledge in *smile*

Why do you believe that I live in a place where there are more qualified instructors to teach the classes I am teaching?  You may not have meant it as such, but it is very offensive to suggest that I am not qualified and do not give the students what they pay for.

I'm not sure why you believe that following the book is a bad idea... I do enrich the course with other material, but the students feel confident that what they are learning is from the text book that they purchased (as a student I had to many professors swing way out in left field and left us high and dry, not having a clue as to what they were talking about... they didn't make themselves available and we couldn't find the info in our text, and then it would show up on tests... that was truly a disservice to students)... so that is a personal teaching philosophy and one I don't believe should qualify for criticism (if that is how you encourage your professors to teach students, I'm not sure I would seek to be hired by you).

Again, thank you for your input, I truly appreciate hearing from everyone.

[anthroid]

Hey brooksc,

So Intro to Anthro is a four-field course?  You're right--we all should be able to teach that.  I was under the impression--apparently wrongly--that you had a fair number of cultural courses.  You say you don't.  Fair enough.  And, I'll admit, many physical anthros have more than passing familiarity with archaeology and vice versa.

Because of the huge number of courses available to you, it seems to me you live in an area with many colleges and universities, thus leading to the very logical conclusion that there are a fair number of anthropologists in the area, some of whom are bound to be cultural anthropologists.  Indeed, the majority of anthropologists are cultural anthropologists, and the majority of anthropology programs focus on cultural anthropology.  They ought to be teaching the cultural courses.  Look, you're not qualified to teach those courses, right?  Just as I'm not qualified to teach your part of the four fields in any depth.  What's so wrong about that?  How is that a slam on you?

And following the book is something anyone could do.  Why do the students need you if all they have to do is read the book?  You have to do more than "enrich."  You have to provide the students with depth and expertise based on your own fieldwork and publications.  Certainly I don't keep any adjuncts around who just teach to the text.  The text is the starting place. 

I'm not sure I'd want to hire you if you think that following the text with "enrichment" is good enough.  That doesn't indicate mastery of the material and taking charge of the course, and that's what's going to come across in any tt interview you might have.  Indeed, I interviewed someone a couple of years ago who had much the same "philosophy" as you do.  I didn't hire that person, even for adjunct work.  There just wasn't enough depth.  (BTW it wasn't you--that person had a MA in cultural.)

Now, look, I'm probably overinterpreting or misinterpreting what you're saying, but I'm speaking as someone who has adjuncted, been on the tenure track, and has gone through the tenure process successfully and is now a chair.  I've been around for twenty years, just about, and the position I'm seeing here that you're providing is raising some big red flags for me.

If you'd like to talk about where you are and where you're going privately, I'd be more than happy to talk with you via PM. 

But, mainly:  don't teach 14 courses.  9 is probably pushing it.

[comp_queen]

Interthreadual update:  I just broke up with the SO I met the semester I taught a million courses.  Now before people start leaping over me for correlation/causation stuff (my lifelong rejection of the blanket statement "correlation does not mean causation" and my distrust of statistics for decision making/conclusion-drawing regarding anything that happens outside of Major League Baseball are other topics for another day).

Now, some reasons for the breakup were the kind of out of left field things that happen to every family, no matter where you live or what you do for a living.  But one major stressor was the move.  I realize Ex didn't know me as well as he otherwise might have if he thought there was a snowball's chance that I wouldn't take the TT job once offered.  I made a choice (though in many ways it was a choice made long before I ever met him) to take this job.  If I hadn't, I would have been teaching ten or more courses the subsequent fall semester while again running a full-time job search. 

So along with my apparently forever diminished health, the toll taken by my career path has now gotten even higher.  But yes, I think I would make the same choices again.

I share this not just for the benefit of the OP and my own therapeutic needs but for everyone's considerations.

Draw your own conclusions, and best of luck to all.

[conjugate]

Interthreadual update:  I just broke up with the SO I met the semester I taught a million courses.  Now before people start leaping over me for correlation/causation stuff (my lifelong rejection of the blanket statement "correlation does not mean causation" and my distrust of statistics for decision making/conclusion-drawing regarding anything that happens outside of Major League Baseball are other topics for another day).

I'm very sorry to hear this.  It's very painful in many ways, I know.  On the plus side, I will try to find out if you're moving to wherever my next job will be so I can start hitting on you.

Okay, so maybe that's not a plus side.  Never mind, then.  :-)

[untenured]

There's a myth out there that, beyond a certain point, more classes = more experience = better job prospects.  Once an instructor has taught some classes, one does not need to prove your pedagogical acumen over and over.  Thats when the aspiring TT faculty switches to publishing if all possible.

Then there are folks who deep down just don't like to do research.  They teach and teach and teach.  Fifteen years later, they are roads scholars and often unhappy in their low-paid, high-work lot.

Untenured

[bms2000]

Well, this term I am teaching 3 classes, and supporting (let me count) 3 others. And it is going to be pretty crazy. But I am trying to be hyper organized about it, and so far, it is going pretty well.

I think 14 classes is a bit over the top. I guess I would only agree to all those classes if I knew that I could deliver the goods. I am dedicated to making sure my students all get their money's worth, and I don't want to overschedule myself into a nervous breakdown half way through the term.

[euro_trash]

14 classes is just nuts, and people who would even consider the idea would be better off teaching 2 and working on several articles. 

[starving_artist]

I once taught 7 classes and will never do that again. These weren't all 3 hr/wk classes either. A few were lab and lecture for 6 hrs/wk. The money, however, was fantastic- almost equivalent to what a new full-timer would make. Unfortunately, the toll on my relationship with my partner was irreversible.

BTW- I also kept losing my voice because I lectured for five hours a day without a mic.