Crossing a line
Last year, I took on a temporary lecturing position with a college. It was a really exciting opportunity to work with a group of people who were returning to learning after some time away from the classroom.
I got the sense that the department was reeling a bit, from a mixture of unplanned staff absence and navigating how to return to in person teaching. I think that’s why, quite quickly, I was given a few different topics to teach and not much guidance on how to go about it. Some old slides here, an outline of the expected module outcomes there and a nice pep talk after.
It was really important to me that students, whose futures depended on the effective and thoughtful delivery of their course, didn’t feel a hard impact from a set of circumstances that they couldn’t control. Equally, it’s important to me that I don’t “fake it till I make it” so much as I understand it enough to have a conversation about it without lying.
So I blocked out the Sunday before the first lecture and spent the day brushing up.
The area I was teaching in was the same as my undergrad so it wasn’t a complete departure. I just wanted to make sure people had access to the freshest sources, the most up to date information about the subject area and grounding theory to base their discussion on. It took me all day and I headed to bed feeling like I had done about enough to deliver a lecture that would give the students confidence that the class was worthwhile.
When it came time to submit my time sheets, I was told that there was a discrepancy. Although I had taken a day to organise that lecture, preparation time was paid at a fixed rate in relation to teaching time — and that I’d be paid for something like an hour of the time I spent getting ready.
Scratching beneath the surface, I realised that my contract entitled me to less annual leave, less flexibility for preparation time and ultimately led to less time focused on what students need. It was obvious that I was never going to be able to deliver the kind of learning that I thought people deserved. So I finished up quickly and became another in a line of lecturers who had popped their heads in and then let the students down.
This is not a situation that is unique to the college I worked at, or colleges in general. University staff too are being squeezed every day — just one more class, just one more student to supervise, just one more hour.
Eroding staff terms and conditions, while maintaining the same expectations of delivery on them, is what has led to the unprecedented strikes that we are seeing across campuses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VL_N5ze05lQ
I’m now studying for a postgraduate qualification, as part of my journey to becoming a counsellor, and find myself on the other end of this. With six more weeks of disruption to campuses planned, the invitation is to be frustrated at the lecturers who are making this happen, not the leaders who are refusing to budge.
Making things more complicated, my lecturers are not striking and my classes are going ahead.
So my choices are to cross a picket line — something unfathomable to me as a child of the poll tax marches and a beneficiary of solidarity that has spanned generations — or to forfeit my qualification and future because a pay deal is not being reached.
The fee for my course is £7,900 — and almost double that for the international students I study with — so it stings a little more to have to choose between my values and my future when I know so much money is being paid in.
Communication from the university, which is focused on assuring me that crossing the picket line will not place me in any physical danger, misses the point.
I don’t feel like I am at harm from the whistles, banners and chants of lecturing staff. The biggest detriment to my student experience will come from tired people being squeezed so much that they can’t deliver the kind of learning that students need.
It’s not like the options in front of us are to either have strikes or to go back to a perfect educational experience. These strikes are about stopping further erosion of terms and conditions for lecturers, and in turn, protecting the classroom experience of students.
If this doesn’t happen, Scotland will suffer. Good learning and teaching is where medical breakthroughs begin, it’s where businesses are conceived and it’s where everyone’s potential is nurtured.
It’s in all of our interests for a new settlement to be reached and to support those people striking to make it happen.
