Recently I interviewed for a part-time position teaching at a local community college. Quite an interesting experience. The hiring committee was interviewing multiple candidates over several weeks. A couple quick calculations and I wondered if they were interviewing as many as twenty individuals for this part-time position. Says a lot about the state of higher education hiring these days.
The interview was highly structured and packed a lot of activity in a short amount of time. The main event was a “ten-minute teaching demonstration,” just to see how the candidate would “relate to the students in a classroom.”
Nonsense.
A ten-minute teaching demonstration in a job interview in front of a hiring committee of four individuals bears no resemblance, no relationship whatsoever, to the dynamics of a classroom setting. There is no continuity, no context. It assumes no rapport between teacher and student. All it reveals is the candidate’s ability to deal with artificial, contrived expectations in an unrealistic setting far removed from anything resembling teaching and learning.
But that’s not what I’m here to discuss today.
Following the “ten-minute teaching demonstration” came twenty minutes of interactive questioning. Meaning each member of the committee had a pre-programmed question for the candidate to respond to in a very short period of time. Stop for a moment to consider what the filters are on this hiring process so far.
The first question had to do with how this position, if offered and accepted, would figure into the candidate’s career path.
Let’s look at two perspectives offered by that question.
First, what career is expected of a part-time community college instructor? Does the candidate aspire to teach at multiple community colleges to make ends meet at home? Does the candidate aspire to a full-time teaching position? And just how realistic would that be? What fraction of part-time instructors are eventually hired full-time these days? If this was part of the candidate’s “career path” I would have to seriously question the candidate’s grasp on reality.
Second, is teaching a career? Do we teach to advance in position? To what position? Do we teach to become administrators? To become Deans or college presidents? Note that for some, this is true. Being true renders no judgment on the individual as a teacher. A great teacher may well aspire to higher levels of administration in order to make a difference, to become a decision-maker, to create change. I know I did.
But for me at seventy-one years of age, standing in this interview and confronted with the realities “my career,” this question is both problem and opportunity. I responded to this question by thanking the committee for assuming that my “career” was alive and well at my age. Most times, you understand, people assume I am done and gone, out of the game, a non-player. But more than that (I explained), teaching has never been my career. Teaching is my passion. My life’s work. There is no career path, no stepping stones, no benchmarks of achievement other than observing a student exceed their own expectations, accomplish something they thought beyond them. To see a student grow in spirit and confidence, to learn and use their natural voice in the world.
Not a career at all. My life’s work. Whatever it looked like, in whatever venue it took place. My passion.
Teaching is where my deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.
One last comment on that question of where this part-time position would take me on my career path. Embedded within that question are elements of ageist discrimination. Not mean, or intentional. But definitely unaware. And this strikes at the insidious nature of ageist discrimination. That question comes with the assumption that the successful candidate will be younger. Yes, that is ageist language.