Recent hire doesn't actually know the material

[Hibush]

-I agree that the pay is contemptible. And I hate it. We've rearranged some things within the department to make some funds available to part-time faculty for travel and professional development. Band-aids, I know, but the problem is institution-wide. It's out of our hands in the department.

As long as this limitation remains, you are unlikely to be able to hire better than you have. Since that quality hire does not result in an acceptable program, you may need to reassess what you can reasonably do in the program.

Administration may protest, but denying reality will help nobody. They will have you "regrouping" while claiming to "continue until we've achieved all objectives laid out at the beginning."

[mamselle]

But the fact is that people with better skills are probably available even at the low pay, etc.

If it's a case of a course in progress, it's unfair to the students already enrolled not to amend it somehow.

Use it as an opportunity to make the point at the larger scale, but get someone decent in for the short term...mes deux centimes...

M.

[huitz2020]

This is exactly what one should expect from the circumstances. Good luck finding someone else willing to teach the subject as a hobby with no job security, pay or autonomy. In addition, good luck getting other to pay to be on the receiving end of that instruction.

I agree. Academia is grinding people up and spitting them out. I feel pretty ground down most of the time, myself. But I am honestly doing the best I can in this situation. I have zero control over the new hire's pay, benefits, or security (or those of anyone else, for that matter). I'm not in the room when that happens, not a part of those conversations. What I am responsible for, though, is the experience that the students seek, and that is something that the new hire claimed to be able to deliver. They are not equipped to do that.

I appreciate your sentiments regarding the exploitative nature of the situation. I genuinely do. I just have absolutely no influence whatsoever over any of that.

[quasihumanist]

-I agree that the pay is contemptible. And I hate it. We've rearranged some things within the department to make some funds available to part-time faculty for travel and professional development. Band-aids, I know, but the problem is institution-wide. It's out of our hands in the department.

As long as this limitation remains, you are unlikely to be able to hire better than you have. Since that quality hire does not result in an acceptable program, you may need to reassess what you can reasonably do in the program.

Administration may protest, but denying reality will help nobody. They will have you "regrouping" while claiming to "continue until we've achieved all objectives laid out at the beginning."

Acceptable to whom?

I'll bet that, as far as the administration is concerned, your hire results in a perfectly acceptable program, since it keeps butts in seats just as well as anyone else.

[mamselle]

Until the next semester--when they all complain they weren't prepared for that work from the previous semester, and they all drop out.

Remediation in foreign language learning is much harder than learning it right the first time around--not sure if it's exactly the same for math or not, but I recall having a math book with problems to work from, so catching up on something missed wasn't too hard if one did the work.

Languages are different--the big adjunct problem isn't yours to solve here, but the ground-scale proficiency and articulation problems are, it seems to me.

Mais, que sais-je?

M.

[Ruralguy]

we have, overvmy 23 years here, fired 1 or 2 instructors midstream. Usually, we let one bad semesterv fly. but of they didnt seem to care, wed  to get rid of him faster.

[kaysixteen]

So outside of the problems of a foreign language  instructor who is less than fluent in that language, what steps do you take to ascertain mid-semester whether Adjunct X is incompetent and needs dismissal?

[glowdart]

Sometimes, you just have to admit you made a bad hire & let people go.

Who else is around and can pick up an overload?

And next time, absolutely the interview should be in the language of the course.

[jerseyjay]

It seems you have three overlapping problems: an immediate one (what to do this semester); an intermediate one (what to do next semester) and a structural one (how to get good instructors).

For this semester, you (assuming you have the power) have to decide how to balance institutional objectives (the inertia to let things continue without making any waves), fairness to the students, fairness to the instructor, and fairness to other instructors. Is it possible to fire an instructor mid-semester, or are there various steps you have to do first? Is there anybody who will take the instructor's place? Is the damage being done by the instructor so bad that it is imperative you get rid of them? Is there any way to improve the instructor's performance, e.g., issuing them a warning that if they do not change you will take away the class?

It would seem to me that it would be best if it were possible to figure out a way to keep the instructor for the rest of the semester but make sure their teaching is not doing any harm to the students. When a similar situation happened in my department, we had a full-timer observe the class, then sit down with the instructor and make polite yet strong points about problems. This situation, however, was not one of the instructor teaching WRONG information, but rather being inexperienced and somewhat incompetent. Thus the class limped through to the end of the semester. I do not know if this is a possibility in your situation.

But I would advise you to have somebody observe the class to get a sense of what is happening in the classroom. (This is supposed to happen at my school for all new adjuncts, though it doesn't always.) Then have the observer sit down with the instructor and candidly give feedback. If there is something that is completely unacceptable (e.g., teaching something that is just wrong, like misconjugating verbs or teaching 1+1=3) then the instructor should be told that if this continues there is a real likelihood of loosing the course. Set up a process to verify compliance and document. You will have to decide, ultimately, whether the instructor is so bad it justifies terminating the employment in the middle of the semester. And you need to know what the protocols to do this are, what rights the instructor will have, and who would take over their course. I have to say that firing adjuncts in mid-semester is rare.

Which brings me to the next semester. If this adjunct is not working, but you can make it through the course, of course there is no guarantee of being hired next semester and there is no real explanation for why. So start advertising for a part-timer now. And I agree that if this is a language course, you should have some mechanism to gauge the applicants' skills. This would include looking at their CV (did they teach the same course for several years elsewhere) and having a brief conversation with them in the language. Ask them how they would teach a certain concept.

I am a historian, not a language teacher. That said, in my personal experience, I know enough Spanish to live in Latin America, read Spanish-language books and magazines, do research in Latin American history, and maintain personal relationships with people who are mono-linguist Spanish speakers. I could probably write (in English) a MA thesis about a Spanish author. I think I would be a horrible Spanish teacher; my pronunciation is so-so, I am rusty on certain grammar rules, for example. I am also a native English speaker, and my attempts to teach ESL were failures, in part because I don't have the temperament, and in part the knowledge of English grammar is not my strong point. This is to say: if somebody comes to you with a MA (or a PhD) in a particular language, do not assume they would be a good teacher for an introductory course.

For the longer-term, structural issues, you probably do not have much control. But relying on poorly-paid adjuncts who are hired at the last minute is a recipe for disaster. Can you use this semester as a justification for a line?

[downer]

When you are in a situation which is set up to go badly, and you feel bad about it going badly, but can't much change the situation, what should you do?

There are two main options. Get out, and move to a better place. Hopefully that is possible.

The second is stop caring about what happens. That doesn't necessarily mean become completely nihilistic. You can still occasionally make token efforts to improve things and stay cheerful to keep people's spirits up. But underneath the facade, you know you are at a place that is dysfunctional and you have to live with that. Increasingly, I think that is how much of higher ed is.

[artalot]

Your immediate steps depend on whether or not you have someone else who can teach the course. If another professor can teach it and you can offer them an appropriate incentive, that might be the best solution. Then talk to the Dean about upping the salary - at my uni the adjunct salary for languages is so low that $500-1000 would be a big boost.

However, I'd suggest you take this as an opportunity to put some procedures in place for hiring and evaluation of adjuncts. Others have good suggestions for pre-hire screening. Post-hire, I think you should definitely observe a new adjunct early and often. I'd also suggest some policies that require cohesion at the intro level. In my department (art), all faculty use the same basic syllabus for our 4 course foundations sequence. We rely on adjuncts pretty frequently - someone is always on leave, a course over-enrolls, etc.. The syllabus require the same materials, texts, basic assignments and grade breakdown. Individual instructors can alter the specifics of the assignment, but have to include basic types (artist's statement, critique, portfolio consisting of X number of pieces). It may be hard to get resident faculty to agree to a standard syllabus, but IMO it's worth it for foundational sequences, especially if you rely on adjuncts.

[downer]

I'm curious about how many adjunct faculty get observed and how often.

In my experience, the mode number of observations is 0. Chairs seem to rely more on the numbers of complaining students as guides to who rehire. If an adjunct can stay under the radar, they will never get observed.

[mamselle]

Both times I taught French, I was reviewed within the first week of classes.

The second time, it was a bit weird--the reviewer (head of the language department) dinged me for not having made any assignments in the textbook--which, one might recall, had not yet been ordered because the person hired to teach the class had never done so and I was tasked with doing it the day before classes started--that being the day I was hired.

I didn't sign the review as it was; I affixed a note explaining the situation calmly and peaceably and indicated I'd already gotten the textbook rep to forward me the first chapter in a .pdf so I could make assignments in it for the next week.

Then I signed off on that.

No further word, and no other complaints.

M. 

[Caracal]

I'm curious about how many adjunct faculty get observed and how often.

In my experience, the mode number of observations is 0. Chairs seem to rely more on the numbers of complaining students as guides to who rehire. If an adjunct can stay under the radar, they will never get observed.

I get observed once a year and the person who does it writes up a short report. Among other things, it is good to have people who can write a rec letter if needed.

[kaysixteen]

Two more issues come to mind, like it or not from my own personal experiences:

1) if the adjunct is teaching a fl in one of those one-size fits all 'Global Languages/ World Languages' type depts, it may well be that there is actually no regular ft tt faculty member who actually does that language, rendering it much much more difficult to evaluate the competence of the adjunct in question

2) if the decision is made to require adjuncts to use a set syllabus they did not create, nor have any authority to modify, the dept, not the professor, really is the one responsible for complaints and other headaches associated with that syllabus and its use