Yesterday, I added my story to our online picket page.

The University of California said, when this crisis started, that our jobs were safe until 6/30.

That’s when our yearly contracts are up.

We’re worried they’ll use this crisis to get rid of people with experience and replace them with brand new teachers who cost less.

And so we’re standing together today (and every day) to explain what a 6/30 layoff would mean.

For those of you outside of academia, know that someone who is laid off in the Summer will NOT be able to get hired to teach somewhere else in Fall. Our job searches take months–almost a year for the good ones. A tenure-track job starting in Fall 2020 had its call go out in October of 2019. The positions are filled.

And yes, we’re still working out of contract.

One of the biggest frustrations for me is how the university’s understanding of my job is so different from reality.

The university says I’m not teaching online, that I’m doing remote instruction (meaning fully synchronous courses).

My students would be surprised by that, since we’re asynchronous.

(We’re supposed to get paid more if we’re teaching online, which is why this semantic argument matters.)

The university says we don’t write letters of recommendation.

Just this week, I’ve been asked for four more.

The university says we don’t mentor.

Just this week, I’ve gotten eight emails thanking me for checking in on students. They say their professors are “less personal” with learning.

Just this week, I’ve gotten three emails from students of years past, telling me they’re thinking of me, that they’re grateful for me, that they’re wishing me health in this uncertain time.

Just this week, I’ve gotten four emails letting me know about the final graduate school choice I helped my mentees make.

Just this week, I’ve gotten confirmation that I’ve helped a student whose dissertation committee I was on get a tenure-track job.

Just this week, I’ve been asked to be the opener for the stand-up club’s Zoom show they’ve organized.

I’m used to the university insisting that my research doesn’t count, since I’m teaching faculty.

But damn if I don’t want them to fucking recognize the great teaching we do.

If you want a good letter of recommendation, you need to get to know us.

As I mentioned in the last post, this shows you can build the mentoring relationships you’ll need to be successful.

How do you start?

Come to office hours.

I don’t count talking to me right after (or before) class–I’m trying to get the room ready for the next person, and then I have to head to my next appointment or class. You do not have my full attention, and I might be annoyed with you but not showing it.

If you don’t come to office hours, though, I’ll just be grading papers. I could be talking to you, which I generally like doing a lot more.

Not sure how to start? Ask us about ourselves! Everyone’s a bit of a narcissist. Ask how we decided on the right graduate program, how we balanced academics with extracurriculars, etc. The person you’re talking to should turn those questions back to you–and then you’re learning about each other.

Seek additional work or knowledge.

One of my favorite students talked to me a lot; I recommended a book for him as our course ended. I didn’t expect to see him again, since most students disappear. But he read the book over break and came back to office hours to talk about it.

We built a great relationship over the four years he was at Davis, and he ended up with one of my very best letters.

Many years ago, I had the supervisor of engineering at Genentech come to my class. This happened during the Q&A:

Student: How do you know when you want to give someone a promotion?

Supervisor: Okay. You come to work on time every day and do a great job. Am I going to promote you?

Student: Yes!

Supervisor: Um, no. That’s how you keep your job. If you want me to notice you, do something worth noticing. I promote the people who want to get better at their job, the people who are curious. The person who comes to me and says, “hey, there’s only one guy who is trained to calibrate that machine, but it often breaks when he’s not here. Can I learn how to do it?” is going to get noticed.

Talk to us about independent studies. Ask for further ideas–books to read, podcasts to listen to.

One important note: there are definitely students who go to office hours too much. They seem unable to read instructions or to work without someone looking over their shoulder. They get huffy when we point out they’ve been talking to us about every word of their essay for an hour while there’s a line of ten other students out the door.

This is not impressive. And we know that behavior will not be rewarded in graduate school or the work force, so we won’t be able to recommend you.

If you’re looking for actual mentors, you may need to do the following:

See us outside of office hours.

Not everyone who writes a letter for you will also be a mentor; mentoring is the next level. A mentor should:

• be interested in more than just your letter
• be willing to give you advice and guidance
• be able to give you a helpful kick in the ass when you need it
• be knowledgeable enough about you to know what you most need to hear when you’re stressed, to offer opportunities that you need, etc.

Lots of students get letters from me every year.

Not every student has me forward job opportunities to them.

Not every student has me help them with their letters and scholarship applications.

Not every student gets invited to a meal with a visiting author because I happen to know that’s their favorite author in the whole wide world.

Not every student gets taken to a Comic Con as my assistant so I can introduce them to publishing contacts for their art career.

Not every student maintains a relationship well into graduate school, with me helping them on that first super challenging assignment.

Those relationships take time and effort, and it’s up to you to start them.

Harry Potter readers know that in the British system, students have to wait for teachers to notice them and hope they’ll be chosen to come up for a butterbeer.

In America, you have to come to us. At UCD, they even have a fund you can use. If you want to have a pizza with me and your small group as we go over your grant application, you can apply for that pizza money. If you want to have coffee with me at the Coho so we can talk without twenty students waiting outside my door, you can apply for that coffee money to treat me as a thank you.

Remember, you don’t want the form letter that someone hasn’t even proofread:

I write to recommend John Doe for your graduate program. John was a student in my Advanced Composition course three years ago. . . . Jane is hardworking and intelligent.

You want us to be able to talk about you, to fight for you:

I give my highest possible recommendation for John Doe. John has taken two advanced writing courses from me in the last two years. He has also served as my intern on x, doing y. . . . John’s work in securing a grant for patients in the z clinic will benefit their lives for many years. . . . You want John in your program; out of all of my Health Science Writing students, he is the one I would want as my physician in the future.

In some of my classes, like the health science writing class, we practice writing statements of purpose for grad school. In one class, I mentioned that they needed to make sure the letters of recommendation were also strong.

Questions and answers about that filled the rest of the period. The students gave me feedback that the detour we took was exceptionally helpful.

In my classes now, I set aside a day they’re turning in a paper to have this talk.

And now I’m reproducing it here.

The Basics

There are several types of letters:

• Bad
• Meh
• Good
• Great!

I won’t write a bad letter. And I don’t know anyone who relishes doing so. But sometimes a student hounds a teacher after several polite refusals, and the teacher says: Fine. I will tell that school EXACTLY what I think of you.

Meh letters are form letters. They say you’re smart and hardworking, like everyone going to grad school should be. There are no details about you. Everyone reading it knows it’s a form letter. It doesn’t help you.

Good letters make it seem like we actually know you and that we actually recommend you. They talk about you.

Every once in a while, we write a great letter. We go beyond praising you. We make it clear that they’re idiots if they don’t want you, because everyone should want you. These are rare. They are saved for those we’re close to, for those whom we know have struggled, for those who are truly exceptional.

WHAT THEY DON’T ASK:

• What was the student’s grade in the class?
• Was s/he/they on time to class?
• Did s/he/they come to all (or most) classes?
• Did s/he/they complete the work?

First, your grade is on the transcript. Second, they assume that if we’re recommending you, you did the minimum.

Note: if you brag on your statement or resume about being on time, that’s a red flag. It’s not a skill. It doesn’t make you special. If you think it’s worth mentioning, we know you have a very low bar for yourself.

It’s like saying, “I always showed up to class dressed!”

WHAT DO THE SCHOOLS WANT TO KNOW?

They want to know what kind of person you are, whether we enjoyed working with you, whether they might enjoy working with you. This is about your strengths and weaknesses and personality.

First, they ask us:

• How long have you known the student?
• In what capacity have you known the student?
• How well do you know the student?

If I click “not very well,” I’ve just killed this recommendation. I’m admitting that I have no ethos (credibility) here.

If your recommenders say they don’t know you, there are two possible red flags.

1. Maybe you didn’t ask someone who actually knows you, because people who know you learn you’re a selfish asshole.
2. Maybe you never got to know any of us, which means you won’t succeed in graduate school. You can’t hide in the back of a room in a six-person class. If you can’t talk to us, how will you put your committee together? How will you find your mentors? If you can’t find two people in undergrad who can check “fairly well,” then grad school is not for you.

Second, they ask us to rank you. Often it’s this:

Rank the student against all the students you’ve taught:

• Top 1%
• Top 5%
• Top 10%
• Top 20 %
• Not in the top 20%

The next bubble sheet:

Rate the student in terms of:

• leadership
• oral communication
• written communication
• ability to work in a group
• problem solving
• ethics
• ability to work independently
• responsibility
• creativity
• interpersonal skills
• research ability
• intelligence
• critical thinking

Yes, every teacher, not just your writing teacher, is asked whether you can write well.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

We need to know you.

The next post will talk about how to make that happen.

Yesterday, I had my upper-division students watch a talk I do for my lower-division ones.

(This recording is from when I gave it to the EOP students a couple of years ago: https://video.ucdavis.edu/media/2015-08-28_STEP_Karma-Waltonen.mp4/0_rd2ugqus.)

I thought it would be a good way for my students to learn more about me, my energy/vibe, and expectations.

My students’ responses have confirmed what I’ve suspected for a long time:

It’s not just lower division students who need a “welcome to college” talk.

I asked the students to tell me what surprised them. Here are the top three answers:

1. Many didn’t think we cared if they weren’t paying attention or if they were doing something distracting in class.
2. Some were surprised that their peers are so rude and casual in emails. Others were surprised we think they’re sometimes rude and too casual in emails.
3. A bunch of them thought it was fine to email us for a letter of rec after never having spoken to us at all.

Maybe your students need to hear my talk too.

It was bumpy, not surprisingly.

All of my students nodded vigorously last week when I said they would have to read all of the instructions carefully.

But the students who were careless and unprepared before are still careless and unprepared now.

There is one advantage–in my intro to lit class, we’re hearing from people who have never spoken in class before, which is awesome.

Some students say they miss class, of course. Some have said they like the screen capture video I made because they got to hear my voice.

One student wrote to me this morning just to say he missed coming to class because it was an oasis for him, a good distraction from the rest of life.

Everyone’s favorite thing so far? A video of one of their TAs fighting a plastic spoon.

Los Rios, where I’m teaching two semester-length classes, has moved their courses online indefinitely. Davis is also online for the rest of the quarter.

Today will be spent figuring out how to make next week’s classes work (in addition to the other work that was already on the schedule).

The chaos has upped my workload and my “I have to be on the computer” time exponentially. I’m already feeling the strain on my spine.

Frankly, I’m worried about losing my ability to take care of myself under these circumstances. It’s too easy to get lost in tinkering with a syllabus or in grading. And there’s no forced break where I have to walk to class and teach for a few hours, standing up and walking around. (I realize how perverse it sounds to say teaching is a break.)

So if any of you want to send me a message every once in a while, telling me to take a walk around the block or to go pet a cat, it would be welcome.

Dear Readers,
Across the UC, people like me are now working without a contract. The UC came in with an insulting proposal at the last minute (after nine months of us trying to work all this out). They offered a new title for the old guard and a couple of tiny raises for the new people. In return, they would get the right to get rid of us very easily (and without enough notice to find another job), creating a system where our jobs are constantly in turn-over, among other things.
Would UC admin ever sign an agreement saying they would be hired for a quarter or a year in a “self-terminating contract”? Of course not.
So we are rallying this Monday–tomorrow–2/3–at noon, on the steps of MRAK Hall.
Please come show your support.

My union has been trying to get a decent contract since last March. Our current contract expires THIS FRIDAY.

I’ve written already about how the UC system wants to take our offices away. The sad news is that keeping our offices isn’t even in the top three goals for our current contract.

We want better pay (ex: when the tenured faculty vote to give themselves all a raise, we (the colonists who get no votes) must get that raise too. Last time, the tenured people gave themselves 4%–we were given 3%).

We want more job security (the UC system wants to turn us all into adjuncts, who can be fired at whim, with no real warning, no matter the experience, awards, etc.).

We want to stop being told to do unpaid labor, to stop being punished for it when we resist.

If you’re around, you can come see what’s happening and show your support.

All are welcome to attend bargaining 10-5 at Gladys Valley Hall in the Vet Med center. We’ll be in the following rooms:

Wednesday, 1/29  Room 2030
Thursday, 1/30  Room 2071
Friday, 1/31  Room 2030

Be sure to mark your calendar and make plans to attend our Stand Up for Teaching! rally on Monday, February 3. We’ll meet at the steps of Mrak Hall at noon to show UC management that we’re united in fighting for a strong contract that values the work of all lecturers.

If you have questions, please email us at ucaft2023@gmail.com.

Teachers, if you haven’t asked your students about nonacademic sources, I advise you do so.

Because I don’t want to be in this dispiriting place alone.

A few years ago, Melissa and I started working on a textbook to teach our students how to find, evaluate, and ethically use sources.

We knew a lot of knowledge was lacking, both from decades of teaching and from the current political crises.

Using our draft chapters has shown me how desperately needed this book really is.

Because now I quiz the students on this subject.

One of our chapter is on evaluating nonacademic sources; it explains the difference between academic and nonacademic, talks about when nonacademic sources are necessary in their writing, discusses how to evaluate news sites, warns about reliance on Google and Wikipedia, gives examples of satire news being mistaken for real news, and lists four kinds of sources that just shouldn’t end up in their writing, unless their paper is about unreliable sources.

(We argue that one should not cite 1) other student papers one finds on the internet, 2) cheat sites, 3) sources with no discernible personal or agency author, and 4) religious texts as incontrovertible evidence in what should be secular arguments.)

My reading quizzes ask students to tell me the difference between academic and nonacademic sources and to name one of the four forbidden types of nonacademic sources they should avoid.

The students who do the reading do fine, of course.

But here’s what many of the upper-division students who skip the reading say:

What’s the difference between an academic and a nonacademic source?

• Nonacademic sources are written by people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
• Academic sources are the things our library has. Everything else is nonacademic.
• Academic sources are reliable. All nonacademic sources are unreliable.

What is one of the four nonacademic sources you should avoid in your writing?

• blogs
• news sources
• film reviews
• social media posts
• this is a trick question–you should never use nonacademic sources in your writing

After I take up the quizzes, I have questions for those students. So you can never cite news? If a pediatrician writes a blog about common problems at checkups, can you not use the info just because it’s a blog? How can you write about foreign policy under Trump if you aren’t allowed to ever cite a Tweet? What if you need census data? Will you just have to skip that information because it’s nonacademic? How are you going to write that film paper if you can’t cite nonacademic sources, since films ARE nonacademic sources?

Fellow teachers, if you haven’t had this conversation with your students, I recommend it. It will be eye-opening on both sides. The information generation just isn’t getting enough instruction on how to filter information. If you want Melissa and I to start the conversation for you, our book is coming out soon.