Our culture encourages everybody, including students, to find ways to excuse their poor behavior or make their lives easier. Why not cash in ourselves? Let's start making our demands with my...
Top 10 reasonable accommodations for faculty
10. Multiple breaks (happy hour) during afternoon grading
9. Bullshit-free translations of all administration rules related to assessment and retention
8. Note taker at department meetings that we sleep through
7. Lie detectors for discussions with students about plagiarism
6. Extra time given before tenure deadline, provided to those faculty who suffer from special, unusual disabilities (pregnancy)
5. Large print paychecks so we actually, for once, get a bigger salary
4. Certain manipulative devices to reduce stress when dealing with students
3. Work place setting to include no more than one faculty member per office, minimum of one window with curtains (something nice but not too fancy)
2. A quiet, low distraction room for teaching instead of the usual auditorium full of smelly, talking students
1. Option of using sign language to express our views to a student
* Now that I think about it, letting us beat them would be a nice accommodation too.
Beaker Ben, it's not pregnancy that's a disability (for most of us, anyway), it's having a newborn after the pregnancy's done. Ideally, that's a disability shared equally with every adult in the house. Sadly, the stats show that reality isn't often ideal, probably becasue so many folks consider motherhood (not fatherhood) a 'special condition' too. Even so, I'm all for benefit of the doubt for dads, and for absolute gender equality in matters of parental leave and tenure clock extension for parents.
ReplyDeletePlease, though, consider twice before you take a nasty swipe at the people who actually had to incubate those little drooling disabilities, OK? Seriously, we get more than enough of that, just like we often get more than our share of the disabling workload after the baby is born. And, IME, we still get the damn work done, usually with more efficiency and less drama than our counterparts with unimpinged-upon free time.
Ben,
ReplyDeleteWe don't need lie detectors for discussions with students. We need truth detectors.
Garrity, female faculty have my sympathies. No insult was intended. My point was that schools treat pregnancy and raising a kid like a disability but one that isn't given any accommodations like longer periods to prepare for tenure review.
ReplyDeleteI have a series of ten paint swatches stapled to individual paint stirring sticks. They range in color from green...to yellow...to red. When I meet with a student to hear "about a situation," I array these on the desk in front of me. As the student talks, I periodically offer my commentary in the form of a paint swatch, ranking them on the "Bullshit Meter." A surprising number of students have responded positively to this and I have not yet been fired. I suppose the day is coming.
ReplyDeleteI also teach martial arts, where I am allowed to hit the future little darlings of my college life. Amazingly, many continue to volunteer.
ReplyDelete"letting us beat them"
ReplyDeleteI want to use a cattle prod, preferably in the rectum for the more troublesome ankle biters.
Oh, Gotcha, Ben. Sorry. At My Fine Institution, we actually do extend tenure clock for women who have a baby. We won't do it for dads, though, which sucks. And meanwhile, any woman who takes the extension is, from the POV of senior faculty and admin, wearing a scarlet M on her chest, so your aside struck my ears differently than intended.
ReplyDeleteI was at a faculty meeting today and it was all about motivating students and I wanted to ask, "What about motivating faculty?"
ReplyDeleteI'd like to get being an astronomer declared a disability, so I'd never be asked to go to 8 a.m. meetings ever again.
ReplyDelete