Editor’s note: This commentary is by Jim Blynt, who has been teaching college level humanities for 30 years, 12 at Community College of Vermont. He is a member of CCVรขยย รขยยFacultyรขยย รขยยUnited,รขยย รขยยVSCFFรขยย รขยยLocalรขยย รขยย3180, AFTรขยย รขยยVermont-Americanรขยย รขยยFederationรขยย รขยยofรขยย Teachers/AFL-CIO.
[I] have been a teacher for over 30 years. For the past 12 of those years Iโve taught at the Community College of Vermont, first in Burlington and now in Winooski, which has turned out to be the most gratifying of any teaching job Iโve held. The courses Iโve developed and the respect and appreciation of many hundreds of students have brought me great satisfaction. Inside the classroom I have thrived.
At the same time, I havenโt always felt that I was a full partner at CCV or that my work was fairly compensated or recognized by those outside the classroom. This is not so much a criticism of any individual, many of whom I am fond of, as it is a commentary on the very culture of the school itself. Sometimes I feel invisible at CCV. Sometimes I sense that decisions and conversations, even those that vitally affect my students or me, happen just out of earshot. Sometimes I think that those in power are uninterested in my experience or perspective. This is both uncomfortable for me and, I believe, unproductive for the school.
I donโt want to feel excluded or ignored. I want to be recognized for what I bring to CCV. If you value someoneโs work, you reward them: you make them feel like an important part of the whole, you include them in decision-making, you consult with them, you offer them job security, and you compensate them fairly.
Last fall, our faculty voted overwhelmingly to form a union, a local of the American Federation of Teachers. For the past four months weโve been negotiating our first contract. Progress has been slow, and our demands for fair pay, greater job security, and more control over our course assignments have been met with stubborn obstinacy on the part of administrators.
One argument weโve heard is that CCV teachers donโt merit job security or fair compensation because some long-ago person decided at the schoolโs inception that instructors should not make a living by working at the college. Yet people cannot be expected to live their lives based on a system that may have seemed innovative 50 years ago, but that now fails to recognize the basic academic and economic changes that have overtaken our state in the ensuing half-century. And why do administrators get to make a living at CCV if teachers cannot? Why this arbitrary line, this creation of two unequal classes of people? Why not just make everyone part-time, reducing or eliminating compensation, benefits, and job security across the board? Why should anyone make a living at CCV if its most vital employees, its teachers, are not allowed to do so?
I present this as a point of logic, not because I really want to take money or security away from anyone. In fact, I want more people to have these things. I want for myself and for my colleagues a higher level of job security and a higher level of pay, which others in the state college system enjoy without question. I want my talents, my knowledge, my years of service, my diversity as a gay man, and my loyalty to CCV to be acknowledged in ways that go beyond symbols and platitudes.
Last summer I was honored to receive CCVโs โExcellence in Teachingโ award. Unfortunately, my ancient vehicle, whose maintenance had been long deferred, could not get across the state to the awards ceremony. As a result, I had to ask an administrator to accept the award on my behalf. What does it say about CCV that it gives someone an award for teaching excellence, but pays that person so poorly that he is unable to travel to the ceremony to accept the award? What must students think of an institution that is presumably built on the principles that education is valuable and that hard work is rewarded, yet in practice seems not to value or reward these things at all?
It is not too much to ask that CCV instructors be paid equally to our colleagues who teach the same courses at the other state colleges or that we have a basic level of job security and a contract that extends for more than four months? It is not too much to ask that courses be assigned on the basis of merit, seniority, teaching skill, expertise, or other reasonable measures? Equality, security and fairness are not outrageous demands.
John Dewey, one of this nationโs greatest educators, and a man that Burlington proudly lauds as a native son, held membership card number one in the New York City local of the American Federation of Teachers. Iโm proud to be a member of that same organization and to have come to be so by way of a landslide election. Itโs time we in Vermont stopped paying mere lip service to Deweyโs educational ideals and started making them a reality for teachers at CCV. Itโs time for us to be paid fairly and for administrators to share power and responsibility so that we can all work together to make CCV the best school that it can possibly be.
