Overworked and Underloved

Here is another piece from Lorraine Segal’s memoir, Angels and Earthworms. It is about teaching, so I will add a few thoughts of my own about teaching at the end…

About Lorraine Segal

After surviving the ’50s and ’60s, as well as twenty years in toxic academia as a professor, Lorraine Segal was inspired to start her own business, Conflict Remedy, happily teaching, coaching, blogging, and consulting around workplace conflict transformation. She is addicted to reading novels and enjoys walking in beautiful Northern California, where she lives with her wife. Her cartoon muse, Bookie, insisted that she write her memoir, Angels and Earthworms. For more information go to https://BooklingPress.com

The worst part of being an adjunct (freeway flyer) was the uncertainty, overwork, and constant commuting. It was like running a marathon all the time. I never knew which classes I would actually teach, because the college administrations could cancel them without notice and didn’t pay me anything if they didn’t enroll enough students. I was always taking on more work than I could really manage, hoping that the right number of classes would come through. And I still had to prepare for all the classes even if they were later cancelled.

For example, one semester I was working six days a week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I taught at Laney College in Oakland in the morning, and then went to City College in San Francisco in the afternoon, about an hour and a quarter commute, and then back to Laney at night. Other days, I went to City College and then Contra Costa College, which was in San Pablo, forty minutes north of Oakland.

I never had Spring Break, because different schools had their vacations in different weeks. And I couldn’t afford to take summers off.

One semester, I took on a Saturday class at City College because if another class had canceled I wouldn’t earn enough to live on. It was a brutal schedule. If I thought about how long it would be until my next day off, I couldn’t function. I became very ill at one point from overwork and stress. And I spent as much time commuting as I did teaching.

During the seven years I was an adjunct, I taught at seven different schools, including City College of San Francisco, Golden Gate University, Laney College in Oakland, Contra Costa College in San Pablo, St. Mary’s College in Moraga, Adelante Adult School in Berkeley, and Albany Adult School in Albany, just north of Berkeley. I loved teaching, but being an adjunct was an exhausting way to earn a living.

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And My Two Cents…(Arlene)

Exhausting, overwork, stress, and could’t afford are some of the words and phrases in the above piece. I can’t say I ever taught at more than two schools at once or ran back and forth between schools. But any way you put it, teaching is exhausting and hard work. I began teaching very late in life after other careers, and it was the most difficult, most tiring job I ever had. I taught public junior high for eleven years total, but the last four years I taught “only” sixty percent time because I was burned out and had started writing my grammar books at that point. Could I afford to teach only sixty percent? No, because teaching part time meant I had to pay more for my health insurance, and I paid at least half of my salary to that. And then could I afford to leave teaching after 11 years (which amounted to only 8+ years of service for my pension)? No, but I just couldn’t do it any longer. 

Technology was coming into the picture and being a luddite, I didn’t want to bother with that. I left in 2015, and several years later, the pandemic forced teachers to be prepared to teach both online and onsite.  And now, the government and others who are not knowledgeable about education are making decisions about what can and cannot be taught. No thanks. However, I admire and applaud all teachers.

Teaching isn’t like most other work. When you teach, you must be ON all the time. You cannot go to the break room for coffee, or answer a phone call, or run to the bathroom. You cannot sit and rest (unless you give a test or an in-class essay!!! LOL).

Add to all that, the low wages, the parents from hell (not all of them), the kids with needs that cannot be met by the teacher, and the fact that teachers must also be police, psychiatrists, social workers, sometimes parents, nurses — and now even swat teams!

I remember the time the entire district was called together and told that if there was some type of disaster, our first priority was to the school and community and not to our own children and families. This was never mentioned again. I remember being threatened by a very large, scary stepfather who asked me why I didn’t like his kid. I remember when a parent (a member of the clergy) complained because I was teaching 1984, and there was a prostitute in it. He had not read the book, and the part was so small, the kids didn’t even mention it. I remember the year I had some particularly aggressive girls in the class and one broke the other’s arm. I remember a group of my students deciding I needed a gangsta name, and they called me “Milldog” for the rest of the year. And the time a never-found-out student posted photos of some of us teachers on social media. And I did teach at two different schools one year, alternating days, and one of the classrooms was a portable, which was about 45 degrees until 10 a.m. when the heat finally kicked in. 

Yes, I do remember some very good things too! It is wonderful teaching the kids who want to be there to learn.  And hearing the praise from the parents who respect and appreciate what you are doing. And those parents do usually belong to those kids. 

Good and bad, teaching is hard work!