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[lisa4]

I am writing to ask how my fellow adjuncts have remained professional when their own graduate student teaching assistants have not been respectful or professional towards you because you are an adjunct.  For the past five years now, I've seen some, but not all, of my graduate students behave in a janus-faced manner -- while they appear polite, respectful, professional and formal with tenure track faculty, the very same individuals become disrespectful and unprofessional with me. And, while I do not hesitate to report unprofessional behavior (missing lectures and grading deadlines, failing to follow my instructions with respect to grading standards and lesson plans, etc.) to the faculty member in charge of t.a. hiring, I find that, in many other instances, I simply have to keep my mouth shut (because I fear and know from one very bad experience that these graduate students may report whatever I do and say to their faculty advisers).

So, for example, one day I wanted to tell one of my teaching assistants that she was being very disrespectful (or something along those lines) when she began a very long monologue about who would get such and such a job at such and such an institution.  (She happens to know virtually every graduate student in our field (she is an uber-networker) and every relevant job opening (even though she's just started her diss. research)).  And it was the strangest and most painful thing to hear her go on and on about which graduate student would get such and such a job when she knew that I was on the job market and that I actually would want to be considered for the jobs she discussed. It was as if, in her mind, I might as well be invisible when it came to the academic job market.

But what really upset me is when she started wondering aloud about which graduate student would get the job of a professor who's just died a few months ago (the school has not posted an ad for his job).  And, I could barely contain myself.  I just wanted to say something to make her stop and to let her know how extremely disrespectful she was being at that moment.  But I didn't because I feared the consequences if she said something bad about me to her adviser (who's fairly powerful in the profession).

At any rate, the main point here is that I'm wondering how all of you deal with situations in which your own graduate student teaching assistants, readers, etc. treat you with less respect and professionalism than your tenure track peers.  What kind of mental strategies do you use to endure the disrespectful behavior of subordinates (in effect, the folks we're partly responsible for training)?  Are there ways in which you can let your employees know that they've crossed the line with you without triggering a reaction from their tenure track faculty mentors?  How can one prevent this kind of disrespectful behavior (set boundaries) in the first place?  (My friends tell me this is not possible as long as I'm an adjunct.)

(Thanks for any constructive suggestions!  These forums have been so informative and helpful, this is my third question today!)

[larryc]

Do you have the ability to fire a grad student TA? If so, fire one tomorrow. The others will get the message.

Also--why are you adjuncting? For five or more years? At some point that much adjuncting poisons your chances of getting on the tenure track.

[systeme_d_]

It sounds like this grad student was gossiping with you as she would a peer.  I hate to say it, but by letting her go on talking in a way you found to be unprofessional, you reinforced her perception of you as a peer rather than a supervisor.

If you have authority over TAs, you should not be afraid to use it.

[kedves]

But what really upset me is when she started wondering aloud about which graduate student would get the job of a professor who's just died a few months ago (the school has not posted an ad for his job).  And, I could barely contain myself.  I just wanted to say something to make her stop and to let her know how extremely disrespectful she was being at that moment.  But I didn't because I feared the consequences if she said something bad about me to her adviser (who's fairly powerful in the profession)...

How can one prevent this kind of disrespectful behavior (set boundaries) in the first place?  (My friends tell me this is not possible as long as I'm an adjunct.)

I don't think you can completely prevent other people's foolishness, but you can certainly react to it in keeping with your standards and values, especially if those are congruent with the general definition of your role.  I agree with Systeme D.  You are in the role that puts you in charge.  If you don't like the behavior, you need to stop it when it occurs, not wait for a better time or hope for the best.  You can't control the other person's respect for you, but you can control what you allow in terms of behavior in your presence.  Why would you allow a TA to go on and on about anything that annoys or bores you?  I just don't have that sort of time to waste.  Be less friendly and more assertive.  If you have to, fake it till you make it.

[lisa4]

These are extremely helpful observations.  I am going to have to find a way -- a quick phrase or two -- to let my employees know that this kind of behavior is unacceptable.  The reason why I didn't do this with this teaching assistant (and another) is because, well, I am afraid of anything negative that they might say about me to their powerful advisers. 

And, as I noted in the OP, it has happened before (indeed, the teaching assistant twisted the facts in a way to make me look bad to her adviser whose good opinion I needed b/c he was in charge of hiring) and, as a result, I simply decided to shut up.

[kedves]

Lisa4, I don't mean to sound harsh, but what is acting on the basis of your fear getting you?  And what does it cost you?  Following up on LarryC's question about why you have been an adjunct for so long, what is your plan? 

For a phrase, you could try at the start of a meeting, "I'm going to have to keep this brief and to the point.  We need to discuss A, B, and C."  Manage the meetings with an informal mini-agenda.  You ask the questions or give the directive, then keep the discussion on topic and on time.  If they are just dropping by, you could make the meetings more scheduled and less frequent.  Just don't chat if it gets them onto thin ice.  TAs are not your friends.  It sounds as if being more efficiency-focused would have many pluses and no minuses for you.  When a TA says something inappropriate, hold up your hand and say, "I'll have to stop you there.  That's inappropriate for us to discuss."  You don't need to explain.  Change the topic or if there is no more business, say, "It looks as if that's it for now" and stand up, if necessary, to get them out of your office.  If you keep it short and businesslike, there is less to twist. 

[lisa4]

Kedves -- this is great advice!  And rest assured that I stopped socializing or discussing anything non-academic with my graduate student t.a.'s after the incident I mentioned in the previous post.  It was a lesson learned.  But, now I see that my employees are reading my silence as a license to rattle on and that there are ways I can take control over the situation.  And again, everything you've suggested is very, very helpful (and a far cry from the advice of friends who basically told me I had to grit my teeth and bear it so long as I was an adjunct!).

If I can refer you to my other posts (click on my username for these), you'll understand why I'm still an adjunct. And what's also important to know is that after basically starving two years ago, I promised to never take an adjunct position that paid so little and failed to offer full benefits again.  Last year, I was paid the same as an assistant professor at an Ivy.  This year, I held out and the R1 raised their offer; I earn enough to live like a normal human being in an urban area.  If they hadn't raised the offer, I would have walked away.

Even more important, each position has offered an opportunity I couldn't pass up; this year, for example, the adjunct position is unusual -- I was not only hired to teach but also co-author a book with another faculty member here.  And my very first year, I had a postdoc and managed to get a publication out of that.  

Now I have a book contract from a major university press.  Finally, my own advisers have told me to wait out the economy and keep trying (and I really wanted to tell them that they were nuts after all the years I've been on the market).  

So in a way, I've gotten stuck.  And as you'll see from my other posts, while I love writing and while I've dreamed of writing this book and others since I was a kid, I'm tired -- I'm tired of moving, I'm tired about worrying about whether I'll have a paycheck and healthcare next year, I'm tired of walking on eggshells around graduate students, etc.  So I am looking for a way out -- a way out that will also enable me to finish my book.

[zuzu_]

Maybe I'm missing something, but the specific interactions you've described here don't sound disrespectful to me; is there a chance you are being overly sensitive?

I mean, it sounds like the TA is being somewhat insensitive and overly-familiar with you, but it doesn't sound like egregious behavior to me.

Regarding "reporting" your naughty TAs to the hiring supervisor: why not address the TAs directly, yourself? "Tattling" to the supervisor not only makes them resent you--it reinforces the the perception that you are not the authority figure. I mean, I know that in certain circumstances you need to take things up a level, but maybe first try confronting them on your own.

(Full disclosure: I am at a CC and have never worked with grad TAs. Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about.)

[kedves]

If you are in history, then I know from the experience of a friend in that area that it is very tough (my friend is an amazing teacher, well-published, finally got TT job at a place I never heard of last fall).  You are moving in the right direction.  It sounds as if this is a critical time for you and that you will need every spare minute, hour, and day for your own work.  You simply will not have time to deal with these issues in terms of time or mental energy.  Simplify the time you spend and the way you deal with your TA helpers, and schedule your own time as a priority.  This will fade as an issue for you.   There will always be challenges like this, so dealing with this version is good practice.

I think Zuzu has a good point about dealing with it yourself.  It's also better to be a problem-solver, not a problem-maker, for your higher-ups.

Good luck!

[lisa4]

Zuzu -- point well taken.  In practice, I do approach the t.a. first.  In one case, the conversation did not solve the problem and I had to report the behavior to the Department.  It was egregious -- at least 10 absences from lecture and more which I can't elaborate here.  Long story short, the Department fully backed me up on the issue.  The second case concerned the t.a. who gossiped about me to another faculty member (in charge of hiring).  As a result, I felt uncomfortable approaching her directly.  And when I did report her, I kept my claims completely professional and did so at a time when I had more than enough grounds for complaint (by some coincidence she also missed approx. nine lectures, grading deadlines, etc.)

One of the larger problems here is that I tend to get the last pick of the t.a.'s in the departments where I've worked.  Why?  Because the tenure track faculty receive first pick and the grad students themselves often have an opportunity to select their teaching preferences (and they, understandably, pick classes taught by full faculty first).  As a result, I've ended up with t.a.'s from non-history departments and/or those history graduate students considered less capable than others. 

All this said, I've also had a lot of great t.a.'s over the years, both non-historians and historians.  It's just that the bad ones have turned out to be pretty bad. 

And you're right zuzu -- I need to develop a thicker skin because I'm going to face these problems again . . .

[kedves]

Really, I think you need to adjust your expectations to the reality.  I don't mean in terms of letting them gossip but in terms of what is essential for them to do for you and prioritizing the time you give to dealing with it. 

I am a FT non-TT instructor; I teach 4/4 with about 85 students average per section, three writing-intensive upper-level courses and one intro course.  I have part of a TA for about 5 hours of work a week.  I would never ask the TA to attend lecture.  I need that person for more important things that can free up my time for other things.  I don't get to pick.  I had a TA a couple of years ago who refused to work, period.  He would say, "Yeah, yeah, I can get these graded by [date]," then hand me the pile on the due date ungraded.  I had no TA until the next semester when that person was moved to some other lucky person.  I can't ask my TAs to grade written work because they have never had the courses.

What I'm saying is that I'm sympathetic, but it could be worse and you have much more control over the situation than you might think or have been using.  You're right, the bad ones are bad.  They might not be great students, either.  But this department is not your home.  Keep your eyes on the ball.

[watermarkup]

OP, I don't think I'd like to work for you, either. The way you talk about the grad students--as employees, subordinates, and objects of surveillance--reminds me more of my time wearing the polyester uniform of a national pizza chain than my time in grad school. Are you treating the TAs like teachers and scholars in training, or like burger flippers? Are you providing an appropriate level of professional guidance, or trying to micro-manage every minute of their class time? I've been in and around some crummy departments, and the worst are the ones where the threat of sanction for violating a minor and nonsensical guideline creates a pervasive culture of fear. Are you just the victim of that fear, or a creator or conduit for it?

[lisa4]

Watermarkup, I think that you're drawing conclusions without all the facts.  And to divulge all the facts of the employment scenarios I've described here would be injudicious (one never knows who's reading these forums) and even unprofessional.

In a more general sense, I can say that I would like to be seen as someone who mentors and trains a new generation of history teachers.  If I don't do that well, it's not because I'm too onerous (as you imply) but because I'm simply silent and passive (for the reasons I describe in the original post).  If I do have what you perceive to be strong standards and boundaries, it's because I've seen the competition and I know what it's going to take for my grad. students to get tt jobs.  They not only have to publish, they also have to prove they can teach.  So if I aspire to professionalize my students, this is why.

I think that it's also important to know that I'm probably the only faculty member who's joined the adjunct union and the only faculty member who's detail-oriented enough to read and abide by t.a. union rules regarding wages, hours, and working conditions.  As I tell my t.a.'s, I was a t.a. once too and I do my best to make what is a already a very difficult experience a very positive learning experience.

These are all the facts I can give you without violating my privacy and the privacy of my t.a.'s.  I hope this addresses your concerns about my approach to graduate student training.

[erzuliefreda]

This.

But this department is not your home.  Keep your eyes on the ball.

They are your TAs, but not your grad students, and ultimately not your responsibility, for what that's worth. As non-TT with hopes to become TT, keeping your focus clearly on your goals will help you. Your job here, as I see it, is to deliver the grades to the registrar at the end of the term, to garner high teaching evaluations, and, at most, to provide the TAs with a chance to learn some of what the job entails. If you manage that, and the market, and staying on top of your publishing, you will be doing remarkably well. Best of luck.

[msparticularity]

Watermarkup, I think that you're drawing conclusions without all the facts.  And to divulge all the facts of the employment scenarios I've described here would be injudicious (one never knows who's reading these forums) and even unprofessional.

In a more general sense, I can say that I would like to be seen as someone who mentors and trains a new generation of history teachers.  If I don't do that well, it's not because I'm too onerous (as you imply) but because I'm simply silent and passive (for the reasons I describe in the original post).  If I do have what you perceive to be strong standards and boundaries, it's because I've seen the competition and I know what it's going to take for my grad. students to get tt jobs.  They not only have to publish, they also have to prove they can teach.  So if I aspire to professionalize my students, this is why.

I have read all of your posts, and I have to admit that I, too, got a weird vibe from the way you talk about "my employees"  when you refer to the TAs. Also, I truly don't understand why you found the conversation you related to be wildly inappropriate. Your current professional status puts you somewhere in between the realm that the graduate TAs now occupy and the position to which both they and you aspire. It seems to me more than likely that they look at you and see the next step in their professional careers--but not the destination. Yes, you have completed your PhD and they have not, so you might have very valuable advice for them. However, it does not appear to me that you are (yet) in a position to provide the kind of mentoring that you seem to think you can offer.