Alternative Strategies in Adjunct Pedagogy
- Nov 3
- 2 min read
By Fred Shaw
Instead of active learning, lesson-plan
as you pedal across town, saving
a C-note on parking by busting a lung
on the school’s steep driveway as you pass the library,
built to look like a bend in a burnished river.
Instead of visual aids, pause
behind the classroom’s podium, allowing
that muggy, first day to settle into the dissonance
between your sweat-slicked brow
and the cast-iron radiator now clacking to life.
Instead of clear communication, apologize
when you butcher, yet again,
that student’s name in the back row, mangling
the stressed syllable, your Pittsburgh-heavy
tongue growing gun-shy of glottal stop.
Instead of integrating technology, examine
suffering and want by ignoring
what bleeds through these thin walls, even as you pause
to take notice of paint curling into florets, framing
the busted overhead, hanging quiet from its jerry-rig.
Instead of professional development, appreciate
how you hustle between gigs, making time
to steal a whiff of redbud mingling among sirens
on Fifth Avenue, forgetting the potholes and stacks
of essays you backpack like a burden of bricks.
Instead of a supportive atmosphere, seek comfort
in your peers and the shared, lonely offices
where spiderwebs come flecked with dried flies,
wanting to find calm in the trash talk
disguised in the parlance of the oppressed.
Instead of critical thinking, consider,
by semester’s end, how to carry with you
the image of that shy boy who showed up for every class,
smelling of a soggy yellow bed, his small hands,
so dutiful and human, like all the rest of us.
Fred Shaw is a Visiting Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Pittsburgh and was recently named to the Advisory Board for the International Poetry Forum. His first collection, Scraping Away was published by CavanKerry Press in 2020. A second book is in the works.
