It's not easy being Adjunct

I started this blog with a great deal of anticipation. I was going to document the Spring Semester week by week, examining how things that came up in the classroom could be dealt with in different ways, developing and expanding on what my housemate and friend calls “mathegogy.” There was a snag in these plans, my Spring class didn’t make.

I know this is a constant threat for adjunct instructors like myself, but I cannot remember the last time it happened to me. The Union always sends out an email at the end of every regular semester reminding us that we are eligible for unemployment as soon as the semester ends, as there is no guarantee that we will be hired back, that we are only sure when we have signed the contract. Honestly, I have never worried about that before. I teach Developmental Math. I have, in 25 years, never had a lack of students. An evening Pre-Algebra class not making wasn’t even on my radar.

There is part of me that is hoping that this is a positive sign in education - that the overall number of students needing remediation is decreasing. There is another, more selfish part of me that doesn’t want to lose my job, doesn’t want to have to redefine what and who I am in my 50’s.

The promise of testing, which I remember starting in the late 1980’s in Texas, was that as the standards for college entrance and high school graduation increased there would be fewer and fewer students who needed to be in remedial classes. I have spent the years since I graduated from UT Austin in 1991 saying that I hoped this would come true.

The demand for remediation was very high when I graduated. So high that I was able to start teaching at Austin Community College with a Bachelor’s Degree. There were so many students who were in need that the rules for teaching at the Community College were relaxed, as long as you taught the Developmental Classes. And I have to admit I fell in love with teaching Developmental students. I already had a soft spot for them from when I had been a tutor and a student of mine thanked me for helping him pass Intermediate Algebra by giving me a deer’s hind quarter. (I mean really, how cool is that?)

There was on flaw in the testing plan that I saw as I was teaching. The way that the No Child Left Behind testing was going was not resulting in less students. This became painfully clear to me when I was a California State University Northridge, CSUN, where I started as a graduate student in 2003, and started working in the Developmental Mathematics Program in 2004. Here, more than 10 years after nationally mandated standardized testing had started, 50% of the incoming freshman were in Developmental Math, or Developmental English, or both. Clearly, something was wrong. The two subjects that were the focus of intensive testing, and supposed to be the focus of intensive instruction, were the ones that most students struggled with. Why?

Based on education classes that I took in 2000 at the University of Houston, and in talking with my fellow teachers, it seemed clear to me that the problem was how the standardized testing was being done, and how students were being taught to take the tests. Tests had become high stakes from everyone involved. It even got to the point where the stakes were so high that schools (read administration and teachers) felt they needed to cheat so as to not loose funding which is really messed up. Originally schools with lower test scores were getting more money to help them improve, rather than having money taken away to punish them and their students.

So, students coming into college were taking tests based on test taking skills rather than any understanding of the actual topics, and they were so worn out with testing that by the time they got to college a lot of them didn’t give a damn any more about what the tests were really about. And this is supposed to help our students? Help our country be better at STEM education? The best essay I ever read on how messed up the current situation is was shared by my supervisor at the time Michael Neubauer: Paul Lockhart’s A Mathematician’s Lament.

Now the educational system has shifted to Common Core. The idea of Common Core is that students should know what they are doing, as opposed to just being able to fill in the right bubble on a standardized tests. There has been a lot of backlash from parents, but from what I have seen it seems to me that parents are upset that their children who were getting high marks on previous testing are no longer in the higher percentiles.

Common Core has some very laudable goals such as helping students understand that, “Mathematics is not a list of disconnected topics, tricks, or mnemonics; it is a coherent body of knowledge made of interconnected concepts.” (http://www.corestandards.org/other-resources/key-shifts-in-mathematics/) So maybe, just maybe, there won’t be as many ‘traditional’ college freshman in Developmental Math courses.

If that’s the case, then I really need to work on redefining who I am as a teacher. I am just now starting to prepare for a summer course of Elementary Algebra, and I am going to anticipate that this class is going to made. Starting next week I am going to be writing about the designing of this course. Since summer courses are much faster, I will be able to implement some of the innovative techniques that I have been reading and writing about.

Testing, Testing!

When Education Secretary DeVos was going through her confirmation hearings, Senator Al Franken questioned her on the difference between testing for compentency and testing for growth (the video includes all of Franken's questioning). Secretary DeVos seemed to have difficulty with this question, which many people inside the “Ed Biz” were unhappy about. It is very much an “inside baseball” kind of topic, and I have to admit that I have mixed feelings about this. Personally I don’t see this as an either/or situation but rather as a both/and.

 In any math class, and especially in the developmental classes, we need to make sure that students attain competency, that is that they have learned the requisite knowledge. On the other hand, since we are dealing with students who have struggled with the subject for years, we need to cheer every bit of growth.

So then, how do we implement testing and grading that does not emphasize one over the other but rather rewards both competency and growth? Here is how I do it in my classes.

CLASSWORK

I have come to rely on classwork as a teaching tool. I assign odd problems from the textbook so that students can check their answers and get guidance. 

On average I try to arrange for at least half of the classroom time to be devoted to classwork, however not every student will be able to complete all the assigned problems in the given time. In order to compensate for the concerns about time I will have a base of 10 - 20% of the grade be just for turning in the classwork. I usually grade to or three problems from each section and give ½ point for trying to do the problem, and ½ point for getting the answer correct.

HOMEWORK

I assign two types of homework, online and paper and pencil.

Online homework I set up so that students can do the problems over and over until they get them all correct Most of us hate to be beaten by the computer, so this encourages students to keep working, to grow toward competency.

For paper and pencil homework I assign even problems from the textbook. This can be considered proficiency based grading as the students cannot check their answers, unlike the classwork and the online homework Similar to the classwork I will give ½ point for trying to do the problem, and ½ point for getting the answer correct.

TESTS

Students usually hate tests, and I must admit grading tests is low on my list of enjoyable activities, but there are many benefits to testing (really!). I use tests to both check for competency and help growth. 

The test itself is just like any other teacher's test, as far as I can tell. Questions from the chapter(s) which cover the topics that I feel are the most important This is based on what students need to know going forward, and those areas that require students to really understand the material.

After the test, I do something different. When I had back the tests I allow students to correct their mistakes and earn back points. I do this in what a friend of mine labeled the "communist method"(more points to those who need more). Students can earn back either 50% of the points taken off, or a 70, whichever is higher.

A couple of examples.         Student A makes a 90 on the test. Half of the 10 points missed is 5, so their new grade is 95.

Student B makes a 70 on the test. Half of the 30 points missed is 15, so their new grade is 85.

Student C makes a 50 on the test. Half of the 50 points missed is 25, so their new grade is 75.

Student D makes a 30 on the test. Half of the 70 points missed is 35, so their new grade would be 65, but we bring it up to 70.

In the past I have also had the students who need the most help have them do an assigned problem from the textbook for each of the missed test problems as well.

I have found that having students do test corrections helps students retain the material, and when I have taught at colleges where there is a departmental final I have had a close correlation between the students' grades going into the final and their grades on the final.

For each portion of a student's grade I am balancing the student's competency/mastery with helping the student grow and improve. As always I would love feedback on how others balance competency and growth in their evaluations of students.