MARLBORO — In most particulars, I was the ideal faculty member at the Community College of Vermont.
After a fully funded course of study, I received a doctorate from one of our country's most-esteemed institutions, Columbia University. I am a passionate, engaging, committed, caring, knowledgable, extremely hard-working teacher.
I have brought many years of teaching experience at Columbia and Barnard to my teaching at CCV, and I have offered CCV students the same high-quality learning experience that I offered students at those expensive, exclusive schools.
In fact, because teaching at a community college was always my dream job, and because I believe community college students deserve every advantage their more-privileged peers receive, I have tried even harder at CCV than in my prior work.
In other ways, I am not CCV's ideal faculty member. I do not have a trust fund. I do not have family money. I do not have a spouse who is able to fully support my family financially.
I have children for whom I am the primary caregiver, so when I have exhausted all of the time they are in school preparing to teach (and, during my single-mom years, hired sitters to watch them during evening classes), I do not then have other time in which to work another full-time job to support my family.
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My academic training had been full of significant honors and awards; most Ph.D. candidates in my position would have likely continued to follow a very prestigious career path.
It was perhaps because of this potential that when I told faculty at Columbia that teaching at a community college was my dream job, they looked at me like they thought I was crazy. When I told the same thing to the CCV coordinator who originally hired me, she also seemed shocked.
I initially thought these people perhaps lacked respect for community college students and teachers; now I realize that they probably knew something I did not know: that by teaching at a community college, I would be dooming myself and my family to a life of poverty.
I would receive no benefits. No retirement funds or contributions, no health insurance (even if I chose to pay the full cost of a group plan), no paid vacation, holidays, or sick days.
I would have no job security from semester to semester - ever.
Perhaps they also suspected that a job to which I would give my absolute best efforts - yet in which I would have literally no hope of advancement nor any real recognition for excellence - would become debilitating over time.
Yes, despite always doing my utmost as a teacher, despite amazing student reviews for years on end, despite representing the Brattleboro branch through the accreditation process, despite serving on any and all possible committees, despite being one of only a handful of faculty with a doctorate, I've had no opportunity for advancement as a faculty member.
The only possible way for me to increase my pay at CCV would have been for me to become part of the administration, even at the very lowest level.
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I began at CCV with enormous enthusiasm and hope, and I am grateful for that chance to live my dream. I wanted to teach students who were diverse in age, experience, income, etc., students who were in college by choice, students who were making sacrifices to be there, rather than the entitled students I'd sometimes encountered at the Ivy League schools I'd attended.
And I really loved my first few years of teaching at CCV.
First, I knew I was making a huge difference in students' lives. I relished introducing students to new ideas, and I always told them - from my own experience - that they were just as worthy as students at fancier colleges (several of my students indeed continued on to places like Smith College and Marlboro College).
Second, I greatly enjoyed teaching what I myself found to be fascinating courses in ethics, bioethics, introductory philosophy, and comparative religion.
I was a single mother, but I had some savings, and the reality of my earnings for the job at which I labored so hard took a while to sink in.
For a few years, I puttered along, doing my best - and seeing my savings disappear. I began to worry about such matters as heating my house and clothing my children.
But I continued to do my best at CCV.
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What does it mean to “do one's best” as a faculty member?
To do a good job, one worthy of the needs of our students, each three-hour class takes a bare minimum of 10 to 12 hours of prep time. That's not counting additional research to stay up to date in our fields, or the barrage of emails, texts, notes, and calls we faculty must answer - daily, and ideally, “within 24 hours” - from students every week.
These prep hours don't necessarily include office hours or meetings, such as the many I've had with students when reporting plagiarism or with coordinators to discuss academic and behavioral issues. Also, they don't include the additional five to 10 hours - weekly! - of preparation needed the first time one teaches a class!
To do a really great job of teaching, as students deserve, requires so much more than is recognized or recompensed at CCV.
If we work 15 hours a week (12 hours of preparation, three of teaching) for 15 weeks at the going pay rate, we make about $16 per hour. Remember, this estimate is a minimum one for a class one has taught before - and the hourly wage is calculated before taxes and Social Security are taken out, with no other benefits included whatsoever.
If pre-semester course prep (crafting syllabi, handouts, and grading rubrics; building online platforms) and the required midterm and final narrative grades are added into this equation (a minimum of 20 to 30 hours), which seems reasonable, the hourly wage descends still more, to $14 or $15 per hour gross pay for our most highly educated population.
No wonder faculty are known by students and one another to sometimes skimp on innovation, preparation for class, assigning work that takes time to read/grade, and so on.
On top of these challenges, the stress of dealing essentially on our own with students who cheat, plagiarize, cannot do the work as assigned, and/or face extraordinary challenges can be grueling.
I have taught violent, mentally ill students. I do not stigmatize mental illness - it's the violence that has no place in any classroom. I have taught students who were suicidal and students whose learning and emotional differences I was not qualified to address - and that were not adequately addressed by CCV. I suspect the support staff are even more overloaded than the faculty - even if they are better paid.
Such situations are an all-too-common cause for burnout.
We community college teachers thus take on challenges that faculty at other institutions either rarely encounter or navigate with extensive institutional support, yet we earn much, much less.
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Lest administrators at CCV think I am a lone malcontent, they can be sure: Almost all faculty are unhappy with their wages and the rest of their working conditions, and almost all of us feel strongly that we are being treated unfairly.
There are many worthy reasons to teach at CCV for those who can afford to do so.
We stay because we desperately want to use the professional credentials we've sacrificed so much to obtain, and to serve our students. We stay because we believe in community education. And some of us, the lucky ones, stay because we have other sources of income.
Most of us, however, feed ourselves and our families by the grace of the SNAP program (food stamps), and we rely on Medicaid for health insurance.
Despite the honor and hard work represented by some of the highest degrees available on the planet - and as we proudly watch some of our students lift themselves out of poverty through the education we provide - we become via our CCV positions further entrenched in poverty, debt, and sincere questions about the core values of this college.
In other words, while we teach our hearts out, we are treated unjustly.
And so I ask the administrators at the college: How can we tell our students that education is the key to success if we ourselves are living below the federal poverty line - even if we teach two to three classes a semester (which is considered full time at most respected institutions)?
How can we tell our students how to “get ahead” when my years of almost-unilaterally “exceptional” and “outstanding” reviews from students lead simply to more of the same for me?
How is it possible that those of us who are on the front line with students daily, actually teaching them - which I at least think is the purpose of CCV - are “rewarded” in this way?
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Like most institutions, CCV has become top heavy. It has ignored the ethical and financial injustices upon which its success is built. The vast administration of this community college is made possible only by the policy of hiring exclusively “part-time” faculty - and paying us a mere fraction of what full-time or fairly paid faculty would otherwise earn and providing us with no benefits.
I do understand that using adjunct faculty (and I use this term advisedly) is a national trend.
But I know Vermont - the first state to legalize civil unions (and a state early to embrace marriage equality), the first state to grant women partial voting rights and abolish slavery, the state known as the most progressive and fair in this nation, the state of Bernie Sanders - can do better.
I applaud my former colleagues' intentions and actions to unionize and have been involved in this effort, but I cannot sacrifice my family to poverty any longer while hoping against hope for change.
I am not sure what is next for me in this semi-rural state. But I am not too worried.
According to my calculations, it would be almost impossible to make less money. It would be impossible to have less job security. It would be impossible to have fewer benefits. It might be possible to have more stress - but it is unlikely.
Most of the people in the administration at CCV seem to be kind and idealistic people - some, exceptionally so.
Is it possible the administration is unaware of the plight of its faculty?
I do not presume to speak for every faculty member, but my experience is similar to that of many, many others at CCV who believe that being a good teacher should be more valued and better compensated. CCV and its students have lost me through this unfair faculty pay scale and these unjust employment policies.