The Adjunct Track

Dealing With Nasty Students

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By Jill Carroll

A few weeks ago, The Chronicle reported an incident involving an adjunct professor in the communication department at Seton Hall University. Mary Ann Swissler taught a freshman course on the campus last fall. Her students posted criticisms of her on a Web site, taking shots at her teaching as well as her personal fashion sense. Fed up with what she called a semester of abuse from students, Ms. Swissler sent a fiery e-mail to all of them, calling them "mental midgets" who were "immature, sheltered, homophobic, sexist, racist" and "lying sacks of [excrement]." She added that Seton Hall "was kissing [their] asses" and that in the real world "brats" like them would get "eaten for breakfast."

Since news of her e-mail got out, she said she had received many sympathetic messages from adjuncts. "I don't know if I regret it or not," she told The Chronicle. "It almost had to be, after such a thankless effort. ... Any reasonable person would have had to respond."

Her contract was not renewed, but university officials say that decision was made before they learned of her e-mail message.

Two things catch my attention about this incident: First, Swissler got sympathy from other adjuncts (not necessarily from full-time faculty members), and second, she implies that her response was reasonable in light of her "thankless effort." These two things clue me in to the particularly "adjunct nature" of the incident.

Every professor has to deal with underprepared or otherwise problematic students, but adjuncts arguably have to deal with more of these students simply because we teach more than the full-time faculty members. Yet, as Swissler's comments indicate, we are rarely thanked for our efforts, not merely by the problematic students, but by the very institutions that hire us. They certainly aren't showing their gratitude in our paychecks.

Reading Swissler's story, many adjuncts -- me included -- feel at least a bit of sympathy for her plight. Many of us can immediately call to mind a "bad batch" of students, ones who made us live for the last day of the semester when we didn't have to see them anymore. We can all think of plenty of times when firing off an e-mail like the one she sent would have really made our day.

Personally, I can think of times when I wanted to wring my students' necks, gouge out my own eyes, and wander the earth in a sackcloth. That seemed better to me, at the time, than going back into the classroom with those students.

These are not politically correct sentiments. We teachers are supposed to love our work, and love our students no matter how snotty or rude or immature or lazy they are. We're supposed to stoically and compassionately look past all their faults, understand their needs, and then meet those needs. We certainly aren't supposed to harbor rancor and vitriol against our students, even if they are sexist, homophobic brats. But, let's be real. We're only human, and it's human nature to get frustrated with our fellow human beings and to say things we later regret.

Like it or not, those of us who teach in colleges and universities will have to face students exactly like the ones Swissler described: sexist, racist, immature, and sheltered. Fact is, she left a few things off the list. Let's add: bored, apathetic, cynical, stoned, and drunk. Certainly, we will also have students who are engaged, eager, smart, reflective, responsible, and mature. But, the other kind -- the brats -- will show up as well.

Since we can't fix all of the educational, cultural, and familial problems that combine to create the little monsters, what can we do when faced with such students?

Well, Swissler's response is always an option. Lash out at them. Blast away. It will no doubt give you a magnificent feeling, a surge of moral superiority, a sense of being right. Then, if you really let them have it, like Swissler did, you won't have to worry about teaching the course again because you'll be fired. You can ride off into the sunset with both barrels smoking (sorry, I live in Texas).

The downsides to this approach are obvious. There's the firing thing. Tenured professors may be able to get away with such e-mails (although they too would not likely escape unscathed.) But adjuncts who want to stay in this business cannot afford such brutal honesty. Moreover, to really let them have it pushes the envelope of professional ethics and maybe even personal morals. As good as it may feel in the short run, you may very well look back on it later with regret.

Another response is the stiff-upper-lip approach: Accept that you're going to run into difficult students and go about your business as best you can. Develop a thick skin. Detach yourself from the whole enterprise in such a way that student feedback like this doesn't touch you personally in any significant way.

I have worked for many years with several full-time faculty members who have adopted this approach for most of their careers. They teach their courses in a way that meets their own personal and professional standards, regardless of their students' comments, positive or negative. These faculty members feel the same way about their students as Swissler does about hers. They just never act on it, and they don't let themselves be thrown off course in the classroom by negative remarks. The Teflon faculty member.

The downside to this approach is that, as a teacher, you run the risk of being disengaged and cynical in your life's work. Tenured professors can perhaps afford to feel this way about teaching; they can throw themselves into their research -- their "real" work -- and teach just a few hours a week. For adjuncts, teaching is our real work. A posture of detachment and cynicism doesn't appear very sustainable in the long run, and it may eventually drive you to follow in Swissler's footsteps.

You could set up your classes so that you weed out many of the problem students early on. Scare them to death on the first day -- with promises of an unrelenting workload -- so they run screaming in the other direction to become someone else's problem. Make sure you hammer the class on the first major assignment, so that any undesirables who didn't flee in the first week will drop your class after they get their grades.

Lots of my colleagues use this approach. I've considered it myself but have never done it, at least consciously. While it may rid you of some lazy students, it's not going to necessarily take care of the racist or sexist ones, or the ones who feel it necessary to comment on your wardrobe. In addition to the ethical issues it raises, another downside is that, as adjuncts, we don't really want to set a pattern of running students off from our classes. Drive away too many students and the administration is going to notice. In addition, adjuncts are often saddled with teaching the required introductory courses that the full-timers don't want to teach. Students can't just drop the class. To scare or intimidate them will end up being counterproductive.

A final approach -- and the only one that I advise seriously here -- is to take the existence of problem students as a personal and professional challenge. View their presence in your classroom as an opportunity for you to build your skills as a master communicator. Develop a thick enough skin that you can read the negative student comments without getting offended. Read them with a view toward professional improvement. Read them honestly and highlight any consistent themes that may, indeed, point to some weaknesses in your classroom performance. Maybe you could do a better job of running class discussions or devising interesting assignments. We get the most honest, if raw, feedback on our teaching from our students.

Then, move to the next level of challenge and deal with their sexism, racism, homophobia, or other problematic viewpoints. I have found that getting offended at their "offensive" comments in front of the class doesn't do much good. We are in the education business, so educate them. Devise learning situations that will push students out of their comfort zones in a way that doesn't position you as standing there shaking your finger at them, shaming them for their ignorance.

I've been confronted with my students' sexism and homophobia plenty of times. Outside the classroom, I might have been offended by it. I'm a woman and a lesbian, after all. But inside my classroom, it doesn't really touch me. They're my students -- not my peers. They are allowed to say stupid things in my classroom. My task is to construct learning scenarios that expose the ignorance of the comments so the students can learn.

Remember, passion is infectious, and if you are passionate or energized by your material, many of your students will get caught up in it with you. And they, in turn, will help bring along the stragglers. This doesn't always work, but it works more often than not.