Ellen Nicole Usher is a former employment and disability law attorney. Currently, she is an English adjunct instructor at two community colleges in St. Louis.
Last November, my supervisor asked me to come to her office to speak with her about some concerns she had about me. She told me that the dean thought, but wasn’t sure, that he “caught” me sleeping in my classroom. What he didn’t tell her was that I was showing a film, the lights were off in my classroom, and he came up from behind me as I was looking at my computer screen. I jumped up because I was startled, not because I was sleeping.
The fact that he immediately jumped to a negative and irrational assumption was just one of the many experiences that I have had to face in academia. As a Black woman in higher education, I often find myself having to change, challenge or dispel other people’s preconceived notions about me.
I didn’t want to state the obvious: that my students were probably having difficulty adjusting to me, a Black woman, being their teacher. Most of the school’s students come from the small rural areas of Missouri and Illinois. Besides the few Black students in their class, I was probably their first interaction with a Black person, and most definitely their first experience with a Black teacher. Just when I thought the conversation couldn’t get any more ridiculous, it did.
“I hear you teach thesis statements?” “Yes. It’s a beginning level College Composition class.” “Well, I don’t teach thesis statements in my classes. I just let my students have fun and just write.”
“Is the goal to just write and have fun, or is the goal to teach them writing skills?” is what I wanted to ask, but didn’t.
As I thought about my rent, car note, student loans and my health insurance benefit premiums, I kept silent. I realized a long time ago that, although I teach at a degree-granting college, albeit a technical college, it’s all about the student and never about the adjunct teacher and, sadly, rarely ever about the quality of education.
