Good Student Essay In Hindi
Argimiro Krishnamoorthy
I teach English as a second language to pre-college adults in the U.S., and I'm interested in the idea of using essays from previous students as examples in a writing class. At a previous institution we used a permission form that students signed giving the university the right to reproduce or modify written work, in part or whole, and with identifying information removed.
Edited to clarify: I'm interested in both positive and negative examples. Perhaps more so negative ones since the errors produced by international student populations would be more authentic and difficult for me, a native speaker, to reproduce.
I also have no intention of publishing them outside of classroom materials. Anonymous Mathematician made an excellent point that withdrawal of permission would be impossible if I did this. The only foreseeable publishing I can imagine would be as a course pack or teacher's guide given to the institution or other teachers, but I would still want to ask for additional permissions to do this.
I ask students individually by e-mail if I can use their essays as examples for future classes. Almost always they are thrilled and happy. Then again, I only ask people who serve as positive examples. But I think if you explained to an ESL student that they have the bones of a good essay and that you would like to use it as a sample essay for future students to work on to help improve, I think they would be similarly pleased.
This would be more problematic if I wanted to use the examples in a textbook, used negative examples, or if I posted essays publicly on the internet. Then I might want a stronger version of a copyright waiver, such as what your previous school uses.
I'm not a lawyer and can't address the legalities, especially for students with a weak grasp of English. I'd imagine it would be best to write a clear, straightforward permission form that gives some explicit examples of what you have in mind in addition to an overall statement. I'd recommend the following principles as well:
Students should be assured that they don't need to agree to this and can withdraw their consent at any time in the future by getting in touch with you. (The main drawback I see to this is that you wouldn't be able to use their work in published teaching materials, since that wouldn't be compatible with withdrawing consent in the future. However, if you have in mind large-scale public distribution or anything that hints of profit, you should really make this explicit anyway.)
I'd mention this in advance to your department chair in e-mail, not necessarily to ask permission but just to make sure he/she is aware of it. That way you'll find out quickly if the chair considers it a problem, and you'll have the e-mail as documentation if you run into any difficulties later. (Adjunct positions can be precarious enough that it's not worth taking unnecessary risks.)
If you request permission for a small number of carefully chosen essays, you can explain to the authors why each one would be a useful teaching tool. That would likely get a better response than just asking for blanket permission, although it would be more work and cut down on your flexibility.
You would have though to release your material with the same license (and I see as a feature, not a bug, but that is a personal opinion): often this is seen as a limitation if you want to publish something, but as long as you don't want to incorporate these excerpts outside classroom materials it's not your problem.
2015 is my 25th year of adjunct teaching. In the fall I will teach my 500th three-credit college course. I have put in many 14- to 16-hour days, with many 70- to 80-hour weeks. My record is 27 courses in one year, although I could not do that now.
Some adjuncts have full-time nonteaching jobs that provide economic security and health insurance. Other adjuncts have spouses or partners providing financial support and benefits. I have tried to survive just by teaching.
I have worked very hard to maintain high levels of quality and not to cut corners. I remember the early days of online courses with 25 students in a class with only a couple days to submit grades. Several times I found myself weeping in the computer lab as I graded a dozen five-page online assignments, only to have another dozen submitted, then another, and still another class to look at.
My goal is a rigorous student workload with a great learning experience, sometimes with students with weak academic backgrounds, often with students holding full-time jobs. For evening classes, many times I was the last teacher in the building, everyone else having ended class long before the 9:30 scheduled time.
I have taught in two disciplines and done cross-discipline courses, so I have repertoire of about 60 different courses. I created some 25 new courses, including courses on New York City after Sept. 11 and New Orleans after Katrina. And I have had a good student following. My elective on the Middle Ages once drew 30 students, not the norm for that institution.
I have taught at seven local colleges and universities, at 16 campuses. Most of my work has been at two universities. At University A (a major religious university in a major city) I have taught more than 210 courses. At University B (a liberal arts university with a large business school) I have taught more than 200. At university A, I twice taught 14 courses a year, twice taught 15 courses a year, and taught one year each of 16 and 17 courses. My status was part time: no health insurance and no security that I could keep that number of courses and income.
I am reluctant to share these numbers. Colleges create policies to limit adjunct workloads. But such policies hurt the adjuncts who are trying to survive this cockamamie system. When adjunct limits are put in place, are any full-time positions ever added -- even nontenured teaching positions?
And we bear the risk. I understand the need to limit or cut small classes. Yet for multimillion-dollar institutions, when a course get cuts we at the bottom bear the cost. In the 2014-15 academic year canceled courses cost me $7,000. Yet finding a replacement course can take several semesters or even years.
I have repeatedly experienced discrimination as an adjunct. Are my experiences typical or not? Adjunct discrimination happens when full-time positions are available. I think long-term adjuncts should be told about job openings in a department in which they have successfully taught and be interviewed for positions for which they are qualified.
Unless an adjunct regularly checks the university job listings or the professional association job listings, an adjunct of many years would not be aware of openings for which he or she was qualified. Even if you have repeatedly expressed an interest in full-time work, no one tells you. And twice I have submitted letters and CVs by the deadline and not received a letter that my material was received or that I did not get the position. They did not get lost in the mail. They were hand delivered!
Usually minorities are the victims of discrimination. We adjuncts are the majority. In 25 years at Universities A and B I have known only one adjunct to work his way up to full-time status. Being a great and devoted adjunct seems a barrier to tenure-track positions. When they hire, they look elsewhere. The bird in the bush always looks better than the one in the hand. Only at the third place I teach (a college with a professional program) are there several tenure-track faculty who were once adjuncts.
I do not fault the tenure system. I know full-timers are under all kinds of pressures, stresses and micromanaging. They are often squeezed unmercifully to do more, produce more, document more with fewer resources. I doubt teachers in general would be better with a nontenure system. I am grateful for tenured faculties with faculty senates as a counterweight to administrations.
Some full-timers appreciate us and treat us as equals. Thank you so much! Most ignore us and ignore our contributions. Many do not realize their job situation is dependent on us adjuncts. And we are the future.
At one university the Teaching Excellence program has special programs, classrooms and awards that are only for full-timers. On a level playing field for the awards, how would the full-timers fare against adjuncts? But we never get an equal chance.
Research grants in general have no provision for adjuncts, many of whom are very talented and want desperately to write and research. Research grants often do not have the kind of income supplement that adjuncts need to work on their research. It would not take much money to supplement an adjunct so he or she could get some research done along with teaching.
Adjuncts often are limited in what they are allowed to teach. At one college I have taught over a hundred sections of 100-level courses. Occasionally I get a 300 level. I have never gotten a 400 level, and of course a graduate course is out of the question. Yet the full-timers are not more capable than I am.
I always wanted to feel a part of a university. Going to graduation ceremonies just makes one feel on the margins. Full-timers typically make no effort to connect with adjuncts in their own departments. The work colleagues that I have turn out to be on the library staff or in the computer labs.
Sadly universities follow an economic model that squeezes everyone up and down the line. A few at the top do well; the rest work harder and harder with less reward. And we adjuncts compete with an oversupply of people who want to teach college and who will take anything that comes along.
Also, as colleges have adopted the business model, did anyone notice that over time colleges have had a very low failure rate? Many colleges have long histories. Businesses, on the hand, have a very high failure rate.
We know the history. Once teachers had control, then administrators got control, then the financial people. But beware, the beast is mutating! Micromanaging organisms are now chewing up the life of anything independent.
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