Thread by @Jessifer

Here’s the thing about the faculty/staff divide at many #edu institutions. Or the tenure-track/adjunct faculty divide. Or the admin/faculty divide. Students are the ones most harmed by the hierarchical problems created further up the chain.

Much of the focus of my career has been on developing, championing, and advocating for the work of teachers in higher education. This work starts from my concern for (and marveling at) the work of students. And the potential for learning communities of teachers and students.

The labor crisis at most #highered institutions frustrates this discussion. With 70% of the work force adjunct or otherwise contingent, institutions are scrambling.

With faculty and staff pitted against one another for diminishing resources, institutions have found novel ways to frustrate this discussion.

And where the adjunct crisis doesn’t seem to exist, it still does. Because the work of teaching is not valorized. Higher education pedagogy is not recognized as a discipline. Graduate students are told to avoid thinking about teaching. Much of our work is made adjunct.

In #highered, new faculty are made to feel so busy that preparation for the work of teaching becomes optional, cursory, a distraction, or is only offered as an afterthought.

Teachers in #highered are asked to do work they (often) have no preparation for. And that usually isn’t even directly acknowledged.

Without higher education pedagogy recognized as a discipline, discussions of teaching end up centered around logistical or instrumental concerns.

“It’s okay that we are throwing you into a classroom with absolutely no training. We trust you. And we are certain this will work, because it was done to us.” If what we want to create in new teachers is fear and compliance, this messaging is a great strategy.

What we need to do instead is recognize that the work of teaching in #highered (and everywhere) is complex. And knowing shit doesn’t necessarily mean that we’ll know how to teach it. Teaching is a skill, an art, a craft, a set of philosophies.

And, even though every opportunity is valuable, we can’t solve the problem by offering pedagogical development opportunities too late. The work has to begin in graduate programs. And we have to continue the discussion about teaching as part of first year faculty experiences.

When over 50% of the teachers in #highered have no preparation at all for the work of teaching, the conversation about what higher education is for should begin there. And not from a place of demeaning those (or any) teachers. But from a place of offering ... education.