[Englecturers] workload committee meetings

[englecturers at lists.ucr.edu]

Dispatches from the Workload Committee War Front

Dear Comrades:

The Workload Committee sloughs on.  The goal of the 
administration is to wear us down so that the final report on 
the request for a workload reduction looks like something 
straight out of Kafka - interminable proceedings that lead to 
nothing.  The Chair of this committee - he who shall remain 
nameless but is a Vice-Provost -informed us at our last 
meeting that he wants a report that is entirely descriptive.  
In other words, nothing evaluative.  When we informed him 
that even descriptive language implies connotation and that 
CONCLUSIONS MUST BE DRAWN, he merely looked befuddled.  I 
personally believe that he is reading too much Stanley Fish, 
or is it too charitable of me to suggest that administrators 
read anything, or that they need a theory to believe that all 
meaning is meaningless.  

There is a willful obtuseness on the part of said 
administrator who, despite how many times we have told him 
what it is we do and what it is that composition requires as 
a discipline, remains strangely incapable of understanding 
why it is we are entitled to parity with other UC campuses on 
the issue of workload.  We are asking for seven courses to be 
a full time workload, and although we have demonstrated why 
this should be so for weeks now, and have asked for a motion 
to vote on this proposal, we still find ourselves needing to 
prove our case once again.  

Born of desperation, I have suggested that I write a report 
for the Committee, a catalogue raisonne if you will, of what 
we do, how we do it, and why.  We need to demonstrate how 
many hours over the 40-hour week we work and why we can't 
legitimately reduce those hours.  There are, of course, some 
things we can stop doing --  writing letters of 
recommendation perhaps, or talking to students about their 
lives and giving advice about classes, or limiting email 
time -- that might be things we do which are not necessary to 
our pedagogical responsibilities.  I'm sure if we think about 
this, we can come up with other things we do that aren't 
strictly necessary to our work.  This could give us some 
areas in which we could conceivably mitigate our workload.  
On the other hand, there are things we can't and shouldn't 
stop doing - like limiting time spent to help students write 
better papers!  Strange as it may seem, the administration 
doesn't understand why composition teachers should actually 
help students beyond the office hours assigned.  Even though 
we have patiently explained that seeing students beyond 
office hours in one-on-one tutorials, and that includes time 
spent with students via email and blackboard, are necessary 
components of our work, and the standard practice of 
composition teachers, and the recognized practice as outlined 
in the report of NCTE, they are SHOCKED, I tell you, SHOCKED, 
to discover this is a necessary practice.  Everything else we 
do shocks them as well.  Grading papers and evaluating 
problems - shocking.  Isn't there a computer program that 
just does all this, we were asked?  They don't understand why 
Blackboard is time consuming either - or in fact why 
technology complicates our jobs rather than making it all 
easier and more efficient.  In short, they don't want to give 
us parity and everything we do seems to them unnecessary.

Linda, Ben, and I (with a lot of help from Katherine), 
however, remain your stalwart refusniks.  We refuse to let 
our pretty dreams of freedom be ground down by their 
jackboots.  The ways of the mighty are harsh and cruel and 
quixotic, but we refuse to write a report that doesn't DRAW 
CONCLUSIONS!  If we don't get consensus on this report, we'll 
just write our own.  It would be best, of course, if the 
entire committee voted to reduce the course load.  We need to 
finish this report before the end of the month.  Any and all 
help you could give me outlining what you do as part of your 
professional obligations as composition teachers and how long 
it takes you to do it, will be greatly appreciated.  I might 
add, that it is a given that we need to work on committees, 
keep up with our professional development, and the like, as 
part of our responsibilities.  That will all go toward some 
part of our IWC's.  What I need now is just something much 
more straightforward:  what we do and how long it takes to do 
it.  (I know, I know, I could have said all that in a two-
line email).

I know nothing can happen until after we get all our grades 
in, but I will start compiling this report right after 
Tuesday, and I expect I'll be working on it all through next 
week.  We need to be finished with all of this by June 30.  
That means I need to finish the report, send it out to all of 
you for your final ok, and then distribute to the committee, 
and then the committee has to vote on it, and the final 
committee report needs to be written.  But we will prevail!  
Remember:  this ain't no party/ this ain't no disco/this 
ain't no fooling around...

Yours in solidarity,

Stephanie