Organizing and Humanizing the Teaching Track in Rhetoric and Composition Programs
Zoom; Feb. 28-Mar. 1
Facilitation Team:
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| Lindsey Albracht | Dev K. Bose | Megan Callow | Laila ElSerty | Al Harahap | Clare Russell |
Abstract: The presence of the teaching-track position within the field of Writing Studies has sharply increased. However, the supply of teaching-focused jobs currently outweighs the available resources for ethical hiring and retention practices, networks of support and care, and the potential to organize across institutional contexts to argue for better working conditions, pay equity, and more. Our project brings together full-time faculty in instructional titles (Lecturers, Instructors, Professors of Practice, Teaching Professors, etc.) and allies to create resources that resist common deficit narratives around teaching-focused jobs (Willard-Traub, 2012) while informing this audience of the realities of the current differences between these positions and positions on the tenure track. We welcome people who are already in teaching-track jobs, job seekers, and research-track faculty who work with graduate students on the market.
What Draft Deliverable will be Presented at the Conference Showcase? The start of a Wiki and/or a Slack workspace with participation guidelines and a moderation process, an invitational email and a survey about working conditions designed to reach teaching-focused faculty. The online workspaces and survey will build an international dialogue and provide data that can inspire future scholarship and best practice on labor and working conditions for teaching-focused positions in academia.
Who Should Apply to Participate? Ideally, most participants would be people who are already in teaching-track jobs since a part of the resource creation would focus on sharing information across institutional contexts. However, we would be open to participation from adjuncts, graduate students, tenure-track allies, and people who are in a position to mentor graduate students looking for and potentially applying to teaching-track jobs.
What Do Participants Need to Prepare? [Note: The facilitation team will email all materials and instructions once all participants have been selected]
- Participants will be asked to write a short narrative about their journey through academia and how they arrived at their current teaching-focused job position/title. Examples will be provided by the moderators to inspire this writing activity.
- We will also ask participants to read the introduction to Contingency, Exploitation, and Solidarity: Labor and Action in English Composition before our first work session. Ideally, participants will arrive at the first work session having reflected upon their experiences with labor in academia, and identified potential working group categories via the reading.
- Additionally, participants will be asked to read the WPA-L Participation Guidelines and Moderation Board Guidelines and to bring any other examples of online moderation guidelines for digital communities where they are participants to prepare for the creation of our own participation guidelines and the discussion of our moderation process.
What Happens After the Conference? This working group will continue to collaborate on the guide, facilitate, and solicit contributions to the Wiki and/or Slack workspaces from the larger Writing Studies community. We also plan to grow membership of and interest in these resources through ongoing promotional work and networking. As the online spaces grow, we may decide to open participation to teaching faculty in other disciplines.