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What It Takes Out of Me To Teach Freshman College Writing as an Adjunct Professor

Happy New Year Class! Again, I want to congratulate all of you on your portfolios, which were excellent, and many of you received A's, even if your work this semester was previously graded as B's or C's. You can pick up your portfolios in the Adjunct Faculty office in the Hutzinger Building, Room  136.Remember that I told you that 1500, Experiences in Literature, would be harder than 1100. I say that based on my experience teaching 1500 at MSU, not WPU. I have found that students struggle with writing about literature more than writing about non-fiction essays. So below you will find some advice, and some anonymous lines from your portfolio's that made me happy. I want to thank Austin for helping me make this video, which I am attaching. Now you know I am not good at technology, so if it doesn't work, let me know, and I will try to disseminate it some other way. These are your words. Now that you have found them, I expect you to use them. I also wanted to mention that I noticed that two of my favorite Professors, Dr. Chris Weaver, and Dr. Phil Cioffari, are teaching 1500. I know several of you tried to register for my 1500-26 section on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11-12:15, and you told me the class was full. I would have loved the chance to work with you for a full year, rather than just one semester, but I wanted to let you know that if you happen to have Dr. Weaver or Dr. Cioffari, you are in wonderful hands. I have not taken a class with the other professors, so they are probably great also. So here are my final words, mi gente:Professor Levine's pet peeves:1. Lack of synonyms/repetition- remember to use the thesarus function under Tools in the drop down menu in Word. Essays should use more sophisticated vocabulary than what we speak.2. Avoid the verb "get". Writing is a special occasion of language; it should not sound as if we were speaking, the vocabulary must be sophisticated.3. Writers don't speak or talk; they analyze, suggest, discuss, present, hypothesize, argue, propose, state, explore, etc etc etc. Use the thesarus!4. Avoid the passive voice. Life is not a passive project; it demands action verbs, preferably in the present tense.
5. Get rid of clutter in your writing. When you can find one word instead of eight, do it!6. Introductory and concluding paragraphs should be five sentences, unless you write for the New York Times and you are consciously making a stylistic choice to not do so.7. What is your thesis statement? Can I find it? Do I have to play hide and go seek to uncover it? This will make your professors, regardless of discipline, extremely unhappy.
8. Do you provide three solid arguments (also called evidence or warrants, depending on who is the professor?)9. Are your arguments sound, i.e. backed up with data or quotes from the original text? Or is this your personal opinion with no statistics or quotes to prove your thesis?10. How are your transitions? Do they introduce the next paragraph? Are they smooth? Does the organization of paragraphs flow logically or poetically?11. Someone, everyone, nobody,everybody etc. is SINGULAR. Look at the last word, also called suffix, ONE and BODY. Someone is not paying attention. Subject/verb agreement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!12. Pronoun agreement!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!13. Point of view. Pick a pronoun and stick to it!!!! Most professors like third person singular- HE, SHE, ONE etc.14. Review MLA citations for Works Cited formatting and How to Integrate Quotes, both under Unit 4 course materials. This is an ongoing issue that you will need to remember as you go into 1500.15. The comma is your friend, and there is beauty in the semi-colon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Each professor will have his or her pet peeves, the aforementioned 15 are mine. Each professor will approach grading based on what is his or her priority in terms of what he/she believes is the most important skill(s) to improve your writing. For example, transitions, formatting, counterarguments, quoting sources might be the most important criteria for Professor A, whereas my focus was on teaching you how to find, craft and support your thesis statement and make a convincing argument. As a poet, every word counts, and I want your writing to be beautiful, powerful, and moving. If I had a PhD in Rhetoric, (the study of writing), I might prioritize warrants, MLA formatting, analyzing rhetorical styles etc. etc. Both academic paradigms are equally valid. If on the syllabus, you see that your new professor is a Dr. XXX and nor Professor XXX, it is reasonable to assume that citation and formatting and research will weigh heavily in how your work is received. Justifiably so.Ok, here are some of the highlights from your portfolios: "Although my work likely aren't the strongest one's you'll read, hard work was still put into them. I'm not alone in saying this class was very helpful and that it has helped us to grown not only in our writing, but AS PEOPLE TOO." grammar errors galore, but COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF MY GOALS IN DESIGNING THE COURSE THE WAY I DID."Some common issues I had in my entire four essays were point of view, repetition of words, long paragraphs, commas, awkward phrasing, sentence structure, transitions, strong introductory and concluding sentences". Extra credit: how many of my 15 pet peeves did this student learn to address in her writing?"Being a writer can be hard, but it's worth it as you make it meaningful" THAT MADE PROFESSOR LEVINE VERY HAPPY!"Now when I'm writing future essays, I could always refer back to my peer reviews and professors comments" (No apostrophes!! But, by far the prettiest portfolio, and the student who best understood the value of peer review. YOU MUST TAKE PEER REVIEW SERIOUSLY! IF A CLASSMATE SUBMITS A FIRST DRAFT AND YOU, AS A REVIEWER, CAN'T FIND THE THESIS STATEMENT, CHANCES ARE, IT ISN'T THERE. DON'T JUST SAY THESIS STATEMENT NEEDS WORK, OR IS WEAK, TRY TO PUSH YOURSELF TO USE YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND SUGGEST HOW THIS DRAFT COULD BE IMPROVED. I GAVE GRADES FOR YOUR PEER REVIEW OF OTHER STUDENT'S WORK BECAUSE I WANTED YOU TO UNDERSTAND HOW IMPORTANT REVISION IS AND I WANTED YOU TO TAKE IT SERIOUSLY. I DOUBT YOU WILL GET A GRADE ON YOUR PEER REVIEW WORK NEXT SEMESTER, BUT AS A COURTESY AND RESPONSIBILITY TO YOUR CLASSMATES, DO NOT PRETEND AN ESSAY IS STRONG IF IT IS WEAK. I KNOW YOU DON'T WANT TO HURT ANYONE'S FEELINGS, BUT CONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM COULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN SOMEONE ELSE'S GRADE."Levine puts a lot of time and effort correcting our papers, which helped me write papers that have a clear message and better vocabulary." TELL ME ABOUT IT. IF I HAVE TO PULL AN ALL NIGHTER TO GET YOUR SECOND DRAFTS BACK TO YOU, OR TO SUBMIT GRADES, YOU CAN PULL AN ALL NIGHTER IMPROVING YOUR ESSAYS AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, MAKING DEADLINES! COLLEGE IS THE TIME OF YOUR LIFE WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG ENOUGH TO STAY UP ALL NIGHT. IT IS MUCH HARDER WHEN YOU ARE MY AGE. IF I CAN DO IT, YOU CAN TO. OF COURSE, IF YOU DON'T PROCRASTINATE, YOU DON'T HAVE TO STAY UP ALL NIGHT."I have learned a lot throughout the semester that has definitely made a positive impact on my writing as long as a positive impact on my education." That should be the goal of every class: to improve your critical thinking skills and make you a more well- rounded student and citizen."I would recommend this course, specifically this instructor, to anyone who meets the requirements." I liked this concluding sentence to the Writer's Memo because it is a question I wrestle with. Should all incoming freshmen take college writing, or should some students take an introductory class that focuses on grammar and basic writing skills, rather than asking students who are not academically prepared for college writing to meet a standard they cannot reach, not because they are not capable, but because they have not been taught the nuts and bolts of college level writing. Don't have the answer to this one; it is what we call a "rhetorical question.""I want to conclude by expressing my gratitude to such an amazing instructor, Professor Levine. You have helped me improve my writing skills a great deal." My response: Then why didn't you come to class more often. LOL. I don't teach for the money, the glory or the power. I teach because of you. If you need me next semester, I will be in Raubinger 203, Tuesdays and Thursdays 11-12:15. Feel free to come by at THE END OF CLASS.I am attempting to attach two files, the video, and a personal essay or editorial I wrote on vacation. It is not an argumentative, thesis-driven essay. Nonetheless, there is a thesis. Can you find it? I will give you a hint. It is where you would least expect it.Good luck next semester. Go into all of your classes with the following attitude: I may not like this course, but I am going to learn something anyway.We have come to know one another (SINGULAR). You probably realize that I am not a religious person. Nonetheless, in Judaism, it teaches that if I save one person, I have saved the world. Therefore (transition, moving from one sentence to the next), I want you to be awake, cognizant, and engaged. I want you to be able to recognize injustice and realize that you, as a person, can help others who are suffering. You have that power. Now you have the words you need to do something about it. If you can save one person, or help one person, than you have made the world a better place, even if as a writer you receive a "C" as a grade.I also encourage all of you to think about taking Creative Writing. My understanding is that it is a Writing Intensive Course. It is a different kind of writing. It is my favorite class to teach. Find the undergraduate literary journal, Zietgeist, google the definition if you don't know it. Think about submitting your work. Everyone of us has a story to tell that is unique and valuable. Use your words, share your poetry, fiction or personal essay, and know that your experience can help someone else. Find whatever it is that gives your life meaning and never let it go.
 Be well. Elizabeth Levine.

I am attaching a video we made in class. Hopefully it goes through; without Austin, I may have screwed it up. Your grades will be posted to blackboard tonight or tomorrow.                

Rabbi Buchdahl at White House Chanukah Party (Dec 17 2014)

Surviving an Emergency Apendectomy in the British Virgin Islands, December 31, 2014

1. A photo says a thousand words. Relaxing with the kids at Peebles Hospital, Tortola, British Virgin Island
2. Facebook Elizabeth Levine, Wayne NJ

 

 

The Writer's Rant

Happy New Year From The Gypsies!!!!!

THE WRITER’S RANT: ISSUE 1 December 31, 2014

Happy New Year friends, family, colleagues, classmates, associates, Fire Island cousins, etc.

I wanted to share a story about the power and danger of the internet,  on Facebook , in particular. On Christmas eve at 1:00 a.m., I started to feel sick. I called the front desk and asked if there was a doctor on the island. The staff said no.

I asked "What do I do if I am dying?" He said, "We can send a rescue boat." My children were sleeping. My parents were sleeping. My Aunt was sleeping. I did not know where the hospital was in Tortola, nor did I know if I could survive the boat ride. I waited. I tried sleeping on my side, my back, I applied pressure. By then the pain was unbearable. I thought of the hospitals I had worked in in La Paz and Kathmandu and the suffering of others. I told myself, I have had three Cesarian Sections, I know what pain is, I can do this. I waited eight hours until the first ferry off the island was running. At 7:30 am I crawled to my parents room and told them: "I need to leave the island and go to the hospital." 14 hours after the pain, I received emergency surgery at the charity hospital on Tortola, which was the only hopsital open on a holiday. 

Context is everything. The Peebles Hospital was closing and moving to a new facility on Monday. I was admitted on Saturday and operated on at 6:pm. The laparoscopic theater had already been packed up, meaning I was going to have a nice scar and a harder recovery. I asked for local anesthesia and was told that I had to have general anesthesia.

At that point I looked at the Nigerian surgeon whose beautiful face had the scars typical of tribal ritual, thought of my friend Tokes, who spoke at my daughter's funeral, and said, "Just take it out".

Post surgery, I posted on my personal facebook page that I had an emergency, accute appendicitis and I had survived the surgery. When I came home to recover, I posted a commentary about the sub standard and dangerous conditions I encountered on the ward where I was sent after surgery. That email, directed to my friends and family back home, was then posted by my friend David Blacklock, who has lived in Tortola for ten years. Without telling me, he posted my experience on the British Virgin Island Community Board, and the incident and the critique of the hospital conditions went viral and within the first five minutes 17 local residents had posted their experiences of receiving substandard medical care at the indigent care hospital.

How did I find out about this? I was speaking to a Dominican store owner and we were talking about the Universidad in Santo Domingo, the oldest Medical School in the Western Hemisphere. I have worked in the Dominican Republic and knew the quality of the medical care there vis a vis my experience in the BVI. I said you know, I just had my appendix out here in the BVI.  He said,

Oh my God, you're the girl who had her Appendix removed at Peebles, and he repeated for me word for word the post I had put on my facebook page.

I went to meet my parents for dinner at the Dove, where the waitress and I chatted as I smoked on the deck. She, too, had heard the story, and she told me that the new hospital, which opened on Monday, cost $1 million dollars per bed. So future emergency services in the new facility  would be a completely different experience than the one I had.

Nevertheless, when the Chief of the Hospital and the Medical Director posted comments in response to my post, I felt that a follow up email, with some context, was necessary. I am in the process of drafting that response.

I came to Peters Island to recover from a brutal semester of teaching and to gear up to teach Experiences in Literature when I return. I brought with me grants that I was working on for MAP Literary, the online literary journal where I interned this past semester as the first MFA intern.I highly recommend the magazine, www.MAPLiterary.org; we accept submissions in poetry, creative non-fiction, fiction, scholarly articles and fine arts. 

While I had work to do on my spring syllabus, grants to finish, and a job interview to prepare for, I did not anticipate losing three days and a vestigial organ. It has moved up the launch of the anonymous blog that I have been working on called "The Writer's Rant" which will be written under a pseudonym to ensure that both the guilty and innocent were protected. I envisioned the content as a interactive commentary at the intersection of three thankless worlds: that of adjunct faculty, that of grantwriting, and that of the writer who must work and raise children and writes all night after the kids are asleep, because that is the only free time to write. If pergatory were a location, this intersection of trying to do the impossible with your hands tied behind your back, would be the world I find myself in.

However, as chance would have it, this public health nightmare in the BVI, has resulted in the first Rant-which is about health disparities and inadequate medical care for the poor, not in the U.S., where my daughter Charlotte died of medical negligence in one of  the most prestigious hospitals in the country, and where my emergency surgery would result in permanent disability, a law suit I won after three long years, but in the "developing countries" where I have worked : Haiti, Dominican Republic, Bolivia and Nepal.

The Ebola virus has reminded me why I have a MPH in International Health and brings back haunting memories of the beginning of the AIDS Epidemic, where medical staff in white suits treated patients, afraid of contagion. I remember the one and only funeral parlor in Boston that was even willing to bury the dead. I remember human rights abuses trampled on from fear and ignorance and a social justice movement that began in the gay community. Every consumer advocacy group, particularly the Breast Cancer movement (pink ribbon etc) owes their start to the lessons in heroism and compassion that AIDS organizations built against all odds. It was the era of Act Up and civil disobedience and leaders like Gina Quatrocchi, Executive Director of Bailey House, chaining herself to the desk at City Hall under the Guliani administration. It was the era of black and pink t-shirts on beautiful young men who had nothing to lose, because we only had bactrim and AZT and life expectancy in the late 1980's and early 1990s, if you could call it life, was six months. There was no gay marraige, no power of attorney, no health care proxy, no domestic partnership benefits, no rights of inheritance, not even visiting rights for the long term partners of the beautiful gay men who were dying one a day for what felt like a decade.

That is why I chose public health work. Public health work is political,inherently political. AIDS work is political. Advocating for people who have no rights or access to treatment is political. There was outrage or there was complicity. For the colleagues I have worked with for twenty years, Allan Clear, Executive Director of the Harm Reduction Coalition, Tracie Gardner, NYS Policy Director at the, Legal Action Center and recently named NYS Secretary of Health, Gina Quattrochi, Executive Director of Bailey House, Tokes Osubu, former Executive Director of GMAD and an eternal friend, Joe Pressley, former Executive Director of the New York AIDS Coalition, Amy Herman, my former boss at the New York AIDS Coalition, Doug Wirth, Mildred Pinott Esquire, former Deputy Director of ECQ Group, Inc.,"la flaca", Janet Goldberg, Executive Director of the AIDS Center, Brooklyn Hospital, Gary Wright, Ryan Chavez, COO at the Drug Policy Alliance, my mentor, and the person who taught me everything I know about being a gay man, Scott Madden, formerly of AIDS Action Committee and the man I should have married, Dr. Michael Mullen, Chief of Infectious Disease at Mt. Sinai, Dr. Patrick Hennessey, Dermatologist, Body Positive Medical Advisory Board,Kim Nichols, Executive Director at African Services Center, Wesley Badillo NYSDOH, AIDS Institute, Peter Laquer, NYSDOH AIDS Institute, Reverend Drew Giddings, Dennis De Leon,former Executive Director of the Latino Commission on AIDS, Willis Green, former Executive Director of Harlem United, Robert Cordero, former member of the Mayors Office on AIDS,  Enrique, Tito, Vilma, and my team of twenty HIV Positive Peer Educators at Body Positive, who taught me everything I know about bravery, Val Oliver, Editor of Body Positive magazine where I served as staff writer and co-editor of El Cuerpo Positivo, Marcelo Marer, Susan Chase Esquire, former Director of Business Development at ECQ Group and Staff Attorney for Harlem Legal Services, Odell Mays, former Deputy Director of ECQ Group, Professor, CUNYDr. Nancy McKenzie, Associate Professor of Public Health, Hunter College, Les Hayden, Stu Cohen, Partner, FMA,  Dan Tietz, Executive Director of ACRIA, who as a nurse by training, taught me that there are no athiests on their deathbeads, Rosemary Lopez, Associate Executive Director, AQCQ, Sorraya Sampson, CEO, Urban League of Westchester County, Matt Bainey, and Matt LaSeur, former ECQ Board membersto all of us who have been in the fight or moved on to other fights, we the Dinosaur Parade, we remember why we came and why we stayed and who we lost and what it cost us.

So to my colleagues, to my 5 roomates, three from Rehoboth Beach, two from San Francisco, who died of AIDS, leaving me the only survivor to remember them, to my substance abuse clients who died in Lawrence Mass, Boston Mass, to my friends who live with AIDS today, surviving 20 years of infection, stigma, treatment that almost killed them or made them wish for death, for all of you, this is my first blog, and it is dedicated to you, my colleagues, my friends, who taught me more than anyone would ever want to know, including how to get up in the morning and put one foot in front of the other, and do it all over again, even when you didn't have it in you: to you and to the system of care we built from nothing into a legacy of care and treatment that will be the model now for Ebola, and the next infectious disease that ravages nations and cities and erases entire generations or families, to all of you, I say, what we used to say on World AIDS Day at the AIDS Action Committee Memorial, when we would read the names of who died that year, at the very beginning, when it was possible to read all the names in one year, which would never be possible today, I say Presente!

So, here it is the unofficial first entry of the Writers Rant, a long monologue or tirade or manifesto or personal essay or call to action, one that has nothing to do with writing, but about the art of living and dying, and the onus on the survivors to make these lives be for blessing.

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Here is the link to the ongoing controversy surrounding my Facebook post regarding sub-standard conditions at Peebles Hospital, here in the BVI, www.facebook/communityboardBVI. I guess that I have achieved my 15 seconds of fame, promised to me by Andy Warhol. I am Patient X, the French Canadian steward who was the first identified HIV positive patient. I am the first public, poster-child to publish on my personal Facebook page, the state of the hospital ward conditions of Peebles Hospital. I am "that girl", the one who had her appendix taken out, with the bad luck to present on Christmas, two days before the formal closure of this public hospital institution. How  many Peebles' patients have access to Facebook? Not many. How many realized that they deserved better care? Everyone. How many of the patients lodged a complaint? Probably nobody.

Unlike my roomates on the ward, and since I lived to tell the tale, it is my responsibility to ensure that no other indigent patient receives the unsanitary, indifferent, in fact negligent nursing care that I received as a visitor to the beautiful British Virgin Islands.

 My parents believed that the only danger was surviving the emergency surgery. God bless my 75 year old father, blind in one eye, who waited 3.5 hours after my discharge, for my prescriptions. Dans le royaume des aveugles, les borns sont rois. These medications had no lable, so I had no idea what pills I was actually taking, no discharge instructions, no wound care information, no list of symptoms that would require immediate re-admittance, just a bunch of white pills in an anonymous brown  paper bag, not unlike the bags you see on corners everywhere, with men drinking MAD Dog from the bottle. .

 I, unfortunately, knew that surviving emergency surgeris was only the first hurdle. The second hurdles is to not die of sepsis, staff infection or other bacteria that comes from being on a medical ward with no soap, dirty sheets, inadequate nursing care, no HVAC system, no air-conditioning, no EKG machine, no defibrillator, no medical supplies, no electronic medical records, no screening for co-morbidities, no hazardous waste disposal, just open garbage cans with bloody needles and bandages

I am having an attack of gardia, a parasite that all of us who did public health work in Bolvia, have in our intestines. Once you have gardia, you always have it.   

The physicians, two African Caribbean mal doctors and two foreign surgeons, one from Nigeria, one from Guyana, provided emergency, obstetrics and ambulatory care for the entire hospital that holiday weekend. The patients, only three of whom were white out of a patient census of approximately 150 hospital beds and ambulatory patients that Christmas weekend, some of whom lived, and some of whom died on Sunday, the last day at the old Peebles Hospital on Tortola in the British Virgin Islands. On Monday, the new facility opened and from that pristine facility, indigent and uninsured patients had a spectacular view of the private hospital "the Purple Palace" that loomed on the hill, a for -profit hospital where wealthy white patients come for plastic surgery,breast enlargements, tummy tucks, face-lifts, botox injections, or what we refer to as medical tourism. Compared to what I saw at Peebles, giardia and an unsightly, badass scar to match my 3 Cesarean scars, side effects from general anesthesia that included traumatic nightmares for two nights, insomnia for the next two, a subsequent parasitic infection, returning from my public health life when I was 26, the symptoms undeniable, even after a twenty year hiatus: that unforgettable taste of sulfur, all these side effects from  the hospital surgery ward that JCHACO ww.jointcommission.org would condemn on the spot, spreading neon yellow HAZARDOUS MATERIALS tape across the front door of the emergency room entrance, like a crime scene, shutting down Peebles on the spot- my non-life threatening side effects seemed like a very small price to pay. 

I have to hope that the future generation of professionals in the AIDS field, like Zachariah Hennessey, former Director of Research and Evaluation at my public health non-profit consulting group facebook.com/ECQGRroup, now Administrator of the Infectious Disease Clinic at Woodhull Hospital, or Kate Mishkin, former ECQ Intern Coordinator and now Malaria Program Officer for the Peace Corps in the Ivory Coast, or International Health medical volunteers who died in Liberia, trying to save the lives of Ebola patients, carry on the work my generation began. Because, while I cannot speak for any of my colleagues, the ability and stamina to continue this type of work, requires an element of outrage that I rarely see anymore. What I see instead is apathy. Where do I see this? As a College Professor, when I told my 65 Freshman College Writing students that anyone who brought me a copy of his/her voter's registration card would receive extra-credit, and only three out of sixty-five had registered, or when I asked how many of them read at least the front paper of the New York Times every day, even the online version, and not one out of sixty five, as in none, raised a hand, then, then: I worry and I rant and I write.

Charlotte Clear

Writers Rant, December 31,2014

Peters Island 

Grants for Individuals

Grants for Individuals National Endowments for the Arts

New Narratives of Women's Empowerment - Institute of Development Studies

New Narratives of Women's Empowerment - Institute of Development Studies



I am preparing an abstract for the Northeast Language Association conference in Toronto and found this article.


Elizabeth