THE TWO-YEAR TRACK

Acquainted With the Night

At many 2-year colleges, moonlighting is a common practice, if not always an accepted one

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By ROB JENKINS

The day I realized I couldn't afford all four of my children, I went to see my department chairwoman.

"It's become apparent to me," I told her, "that I can't afford all four of my children. Not on my salary."

Her eyes widened. "Does this mean you're quitting?" she asked, with a hint of panic. It was, after all, the middle of a semester, and she could already see herself trying to cover my classes for the duration.

"No," I said, "it means I want you to raise one of my children."

Before she could stammer out a reply, I quickly added, "I'm just kidding. What I really wanted to tell you is that I'm planning to start teaching an evening class at [another college a few miles away]. I just wanted to let you know."

A few minutes later I left her office with a semiofficial blessing. No doubt she was just relieved she didn't have to replace a faculty member — or take in another mouth to feed.

And so began my double life as both a full-time faculty member and an adjunct instructor. For a number of years, while my children were young, I slipped away a couple of nights a week, or sometimes early in the morning, to teach an extra class or two. My wife, also a teacher, had decided early on that she wanted to stay home and raise our kids; supporting her decision meant that I supported the family, too.

I needed the money.

I relived that experience recently as I read Professor X's widely disseminated essay, "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower," in the June issue of the The Atlantic Monthly. Of all the themes explored in that complex and controversial text, the one that resonated most with me was Professor X's depiction of life as a part-time instructor: the isolation of working evening hours, the sense of being disconnected from the institution.

Clearly, Professor X and I have something in common with my favorite poet. "I have been one acquainted with the night," wrote Robert Frost. "I have walked out in rain — and back in rain." Those lines describe my adjunct experience to a T.

Because I needed the extra income to support my family but didn't want to alienate myself from that very family while earning it, I usually accepted classes that met late in the evening, uncomfortably close to what Professor X calls the "graveyard shift." That way I could still make it to my sons' Little League games and my daughter's dance recitals. I could still be a dad. Often the kids were asleep, or at least headed for bed, before I left home for my quasi-clandestine rendezvous with 20 or 25 eager (ahem) students.

I also, on several occasions, taught first thing in the morning, arriving at the crack of dawn, or earlier, to meet a class. That left me plenty of time to get to my "day job."

Several semesters — usually in the fall, with Christmas looming — I taught both a late-night class and an early-morning class. That meant, at certain times of the year, I was leaving the building in the dark and arriving the next morning, a few hours later, still in the dark. And not infrequently in the rain.

I often thought about that period in my life after I became a department chairman. Part of that job involved dealing with adjuncts — many of whom had full-time jobs at other institutions — and with faculty members in my own department who were moonlighting for the same reasons as I had.

I realized quickly that I was hardly unique. For most of our adjuncts, as was the case for Professor X, teaching in our department was a second or even a third job. We certainly employed our share of "professional adjuncts," scholars cobbling together a living by teaching part time at two or three institutions. But the vast majority had full-time jobs.

Some were on the tenure track at other institutions. Others were stay-at-home moms who saw teaching a couple nights a week as a way of contributing to the family's bottom line while injecting a little sanity into their hectic lives. A few were professionals in other fields who had teaching credentials.

At the same time, I knew several tenured members of my department who were teaching part time elsewhere. Their reasons were familiar: They had young families, their spouses were unemployed or underemployed, their kids needed braces.

Between being a moonlighter and supervising them, I learned a couple of important lessons.

First, we as full-time faculty members and administrators need to reassess our attitudes toward adjuncts and rethink how we treat them. The sense of isolation that Professor X so eloquently describes, and that I experienced myself as an adjunct, is often palpable in their faces as we pass them — if we pass them — on the way out to our cars.

What can we do differently? A lot of little things. Make sure their classrooms are clean, their dry-erase marker trays well stocked. Stick around a little later than usual one or two nights a semester to drop by their classrooms and introduce ourselves. Keep the doors to the bathrooms unlocked and the lights in the parking lot on until the last lonely scholar has left the building.

And maybe some big things. Make sure they have work space, with computer access, to grade papers, meet with students, and catch up on the day's institutional e-mail messages. Invite them, sincerely, to department meetings and social gatherings. Hold some of those meetings and gatherings at times when most adjuncts can attend.

The other lesson is that administrators need to be open-minded in the way they view outside employment. My current institution, like the one I worked for during my adjunct odyssey, and like most community colleges, has a policy stating that outside employment must be approved, and that it should not constitute a conflict of interest.

Fair enough. But my experience is that, for whatever reason, most faculty members who moonlight do so surreptitiously, afraid that if they are found out, they'll be forced to quit their extra jobs and maybe even lose their day jobs. Perhaps that's just their own neuroses at work, but I can't help thinking that, because of the blunt wording of the policy manuals and perhaps the attitudes of some administrators, moonlighters are often made to feel as if they're doing something dishonest and shameful.

I still don't know if my outside employment was ever officially approved. I'm just grateful for a kindhearted, humane department head who understood the position I was in and was at least willing to look the other way. Even if she didn't want to raise any of my kids.