The Launch of Equity Curricula

With Campus Equity Week beginning next Monday, the Adjunct Project is launching our Equity Curricula in several ways, including email forwards. This is the email we're sending out -- of course, you'll have to email me for the attachments, but please feel free to copy, paste and send to an inbox near you!

Every other year, Campus Equity Week (CEW) is observed to raise awareness of adjunct working conditions and the university policies that shape them, but often the people who are most profoundly affected by this unequal labor system—students and adjunct/part-time teachers—are the ones who are least aware of these issues. This year at CUNY, however, the Adjunct Project is releasing Equity Curricula, materials deigned to educate both adjuncts and undergraduate students, as well as to make a statement to our CUNY-wide administrations: Exploiting part-time adjuncts is unjust, and it injures CUNY's capacity to educate. Please read on and pass this information on to every adjunct you know!

Equity Curricula:
For at least 15 minutes of 1 day during CEW (October 29 – November 2), the Adjunct Project is asking both adjuncts and full-time faculty to incorporate information on adjunct teaching conditions into your class lessons—be it a class discussion, a persuasive letter exercise, a statistical analysis of adjunct and full-time wages for the same workload, or an extra-credit assignment to find a link between course materials and adjunct labor. Simply let students know that it's CEW and challenge them to view adjunct issues through your field's lenses for 15 minutes or more.

The Adjunct Project has prepared "Equity Curricula"—several department-specific assignments (http://adjunctlifeline.blogspot.com/2007/09/equity-curricula.html), as well as a general presentation of the issues that you can use for a class discussion (see attachment). We have also made available a PowerPoint presentation, which you can request by emailing us at adjunctprojectcuny@gmail.com. For further information or to design your own lesson, see the list of helpful articles and contacts below.

Why this is good pedagogy:
Let us stress that we aren't asking you to bring politics into the classroom; the politics are already there. After all, "our working conditions are their learning conditions." We're simply asking you, in the spirit of academic freedom, to make those politics explicit and, as conscientious educators, to pursue excellence in teaching by creating a pedagogically effective environment for critical thinking, a goal for which Equity Curricula is particularly ideal.

Paulo Freire argued that rote memorization is not true learning, but actually trains students to receive unquestioned orders like good workers. Instead, he endorses a pedagogy of problematizing real-life situations—for example, students' educational context—and asking them to assess and solve the problem. Freire sought to foster in students critical thinking, the ability to see injustice as a problem to solve instead of circumstances to accept. This approach is student-centered, rather than teacher- or discipline-centered, and it encourages students to APPLY the material they're learning in your class to their real-life conditions—that is, to become practitioners in your field.

When: 15 minutes of 1 day during CEW (October 29 – November 2)
What: Equity Curricula (see resources below and attachments)
Where: your classroom
Why: create awareness among students
Who: you and everyone to whom you forward this, adjunct or not

CUNY administrators have relied on adjunct/part-time teachers to carry half their course load for less than half the wages, and they have also relied on our keeping our mouths shut about it. However, we're not content with this labor system and, just as we hope for our students, let's act as democratic citizens and change our circumstances by exposing them.

PLEASE FORWARD THIS TO TEN OR MORE ADJUNCTS, and anyone else who might be interested in Equity Curricula. We rely on your lateral support for this project! Also, look for our open letter in The Advocate and other newspapers.

Resources
Equity Curricula: http://adjunctlifeline.blogspot.com/2007/09/equity-curricula.html
General Presentation: attachment
PowerPoint Presentation: by request (adjunctprojectcuny@gmail.com)
AFT Campus Equity Week: http://www.aft.org/higher_ed/cew/
"The Corporatization of Higher Education": 2-page attachment (good for assigned reading)
Articles for Campus Equity Week: attachment (for further research)

Email us adjunctprojectcuny@gmail.com to let us know that you're participating, or if you are unable to access the attachments.