"Kevin" - ELT - "Sustainability: Curriculum and Teacher Investment"

This video is an artifact of the Carter Winkle PhD Narrative Inquiry dissertation, "Into the Corporate Unknown: Faculty Impacted by University Privatized-Partnership EAP Matriculation Pathway Programs." Click on the "WinkleAtBarryU" channel link for additional information.

All videos of narratives from the study are read by colleagues of the researcher: they are not the actual participants. All participant, institution, and corporate-partner company names are pseudonyms.

Below is an introduction to the study participant:

Kevin Andrews is a full-time English-language Instructor in University of Kalamazoo's AcademicPrep Pathway and English Language programs. While studying for a master's degree in English literature, a professor had told Kevin, "'I don't usually tell students what they should major in, but I think that you should be a teacher.' But, I thought, 'No, no, no-- I don't want to do that!'" Still, while working on the degree, Kevin electively took a TESOL course during a summer session and found it suited him. "I ended up liking it- I really liked the people in it. I thought, 'If these are the people in this profession, this is the profession and these are the kind of people I want to spend my working life with.'" He went straight into teaching out of graduate school, having no teaching experience or teaching practicum. Through a resume submission at a TESOL Convention, Kevin interviewed for and was hired to teach in a university-based IEP in New Mexico. It was considered a full-time position, but did not include benefits and required that his contract be renewed quarterly at the discretion of a "fickle" and temperamental Program Director. An early career lesson, Kevin recounted the advice he had received from a colleague after having witnessed the strategic marginalization of a teaching faculty who had garnered the disapproval of the Program Director. "I asked one guy who'd been there nine years-- four quarters-a-year for 36 straight quarters -- I said, 'How do you survive?' He said, 'I don't go into the office. The more she thinks about you, the more things she can find wrong with you, and the less likely you are to keep your job.' I managed to stay there almost five years. His comment kind of stuck with me, and maybe it did have a subconscious influence about how- you know, how to keep my job." By nature, Kevin is an advocate for others, so his colleague's recommended keep-your-head-low strategy has been one difficult for him to sustain.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Into
• the
• corporate
• unknown
• faculty
• impacted
• by
• university
• privatized
• partnership
• EAP
• matriculation
• pathway
• program
• Carter
• Winkle
• Barry
• University
• dissertation
• TESOL
• IEP
• research
• narrative
• inquiry