Our Hopes and Dreams for This Book
Many amazing books already exist on teaching, and specifically teaching in higher education. But, when you have initially been asked to teach a class, often with little time to prepare, you likely do not have capacity to find and thoroughly review those resources. Our goal here is not to duplicate those, but rather to point you to key just-in-time solutions to quickly get up to speed. Furthermore, we hope to assure you that you are not alone as you struggle through what is often the hardest semester, your very first!
Teaching for the first time can be an intimidating and humbling experience. Further, teaching can be an isolated activity where little connection and conversation happens around teaching. This challenge exists even more so for adjunct faculty. Those hallway moments among faculty do not exist when you are only on campus for class or to make copies. The learning curve can often be steep, guidance may be limited, and connections to institutional resources and support hard to find. Here we aim to break down the barriers of silence, a cultural norm in academia, in hopes it will help you feel less alone.
This book was compiled by adjunct faculty teaching undergraduate and graduate classes in various disciplines and formats, to give a broad scope of ideas and perspectives. While we have provided many useful and easily implementable resources to help in your teaching; we feel the real value of this book is the transparency and raw honesty of our stories. Yes, teaching is a messy, imperfect science. You will find yourself challenged, occasionally disheartened, overwhelmed and feeling isolated, but ultimately also rewarded. We also believe that effective teaching is a lifelong learning process. To this point, any faculty member in higher education may find value in this book.
A Note About Terminology
In chapter two we share definitions for some of the common terms you are most likely to encounter while teaching in higher education. Often the same concepts will have several different names. For consistency, outside of stories, we have standardized our terminology as much as possible. We will refer to faculty who are teaching less than full time at one institution or who are in contingency contract as adjunct faculty. Additionally, we will generally refer to the instructor of record on a course (aka the primary faculty teaching the section of the course) as faculty although we acknowledge instructor is commonly used in other literature and students most commonly will use the term professor.
How To Get the Most Out of This Book
Depending on the reason you have picked up this book, you might find it helpful to jump to specific sections that best meet your immediate need. You might find the Index at the back helpful, or you might enjoy a cover-to-cover read of our stories of teaching. Also keep in mind your institution most likely has a center for teaching and learning staffed with folks just waiting for you to reach out and ask for ideas and suggestions.
Once your feet are solidly on the ground, we encourage you to pick up some of our favorite resources which we have listed in Appendix G: “What Comes Next.”