CHAPARRAL

Developing Your Teaching Potential: Revving it up in the Classroom

Adjunct faculty may not be aware of the myriad of staff development opportunities available to them both on campus and off. Although most of the staff development activities can be used for flex credit, their value can go well beyond fulfilling that requirement.

     The Staff Development office on campus provides a variety of excellent workshops on different days and at different times to meet the needs of the faculty. You can find their schedule at www.glendale.edu/staff-development. One can learn anything from how to develop an online course to how to beat the stress of a demanding teaching schedule.  One-hour workshop introductions to the latest technological software that we all use, such as Microsoft Office Suite, can be followed up with short 12, 8 or 6-week courses through the CABOT department at Glendale College. These courses, once paid for, can be reimbursed by the Staff Development budget once you finish the course with a passing grade. Be sure to retain your receipts for fees and books. The college units that you accumulate can be used to move you along the columns in our adjunct salary schedule (consult Human Resources about this aspect).

     If, as a teacher, you often struggle over the broken syntax or messy grammatical structures of your students’ writing assignments, you may want to take some of the workshops provided by the Writing Across the Curriculum  coordinator, Sarah McLemore, which can be found at www.glendale.edu/wac. This site also provides excellent tools and example templates for creating writing assignments that improve critical thinking, has grading tools for assessing student writing, and provides campus resources for help with students who are challenged in their writing skills. In addition, Writing Across the Curriculum usually provides a seminar series in the spring semester, which meets monthly to train chosen faculty from a variety of disciplines in the art of using writing as a learning tool. Faculty members that are involved are trained in using writing to improve study skills, creative thinking and the absorption of curriculum. There is a monetary stipend given to those faculty who complete the course.

     A newer program, Research Across the Curriculum, works to improve student outcomes by offering workshops that encourage the use of appropriate and effective informational resources. Look for upcoming staff development workshops from this group on using the library resources, evaluating Internet search results and using information competency effectively in your curriculum.

     Staff Development also offers workshops in enrollment management and student retention. The former issue is vital for adjunct faculty who may lose a full course section if it does not fill by the start of a semester.  There are workshops available in grant proposals that might allow part-timers to access extra income doing ancillary activities for their department, such as grant writing and/or grant management for a special departmental project. Online course development is another way to access ancillary funds and at the same time provide you with more teaching opportunities within your department, so you may want to check out the latest courses or workshops on Blackboard (the new name for WebCT). All workshops of this kind can be accessed by going to the Staff Development calendar found at www.glendale.edu/staff-development. Taking advantage of the learning resources available to you as a faculty member will certainly make you a better teacher and possibly increase your income.

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