Interrogating Privilege: Reflections of a Second Language Educator

Chapter 8: On Beginning to Write at 40

115 Chapter 8 On Beginning to Write at 401 Note to the Reader: I include this essay as it is one of the three (along with those published in this book as Chapters 2 and 4) of my previous publications that incorporate personal narrative. Like the other two essays, this one is important to me because it allowed me to explore aspects of my academic life through a combination of sharing my own experience and showing how that experience reflected larger issues in our field. This piece has real emotional weight for me, because it describes my difficult and long-delayed path to writing and publishing . Writing this piece was both painful and cathartic for me; however, I would not publish it only for that reason if I did not feel that it also speaks to the issues and obstacles experienced by many other academics, especially in TESOL and related fields, and especially women. 1 This essay was originally published asVandrick, S. (2003). On beginning to write at 40. In C. P. Casanave & S. Vandrick (Eds.), Writing for scholarly publication: Behind the scenes in language education (pp. 53–60). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Copyright 2003 from Writing for scholarly publication: Behind the scenes in language education, edited by Christine Pearson Casanave and Stephanie Vandrick. Reproduced by permission of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, a division of Informa plc. Interrogating Privilege 116 Ihave always been an avid, even addicted, reader, and I have always been in love with words and language. I have always loved the academic world,the world of the university campus,of classes,of the library, of scholarly and intellectual discussions and pursuits. Thus although throughout high school and college I had little idea of what I wanted to do with my future, it gradually became clear that of course that future had to include books, ideas, and campuses. As a new graduate assistant in the English Department at the age of 21, I was assigned to teach English as a Second Language (ESL), and after my first day of teaching, I knew that teaching at the college level would be my career. I pursued that career and have taught ESL and other subjects (literature,Women’s Studies) my whole adult life. But I didn’t begin seriously writing for scholarly publication until I was 40. Before that, I wrote some short pieces, some newsletter articles, some reviews, but not a lot. I was in writing, as I have been in other parts of my life, a late-bloomer. Why Didn’t I Write Earlier? A primary reason that I didn’t write earlier was the difficult working conditions during my first 15 years of full-time teaching. Although I have been teaching ESL (and other areas) at the college level my whole adult life, my teaching situation during my first 15 years was one that did not encourage,and in fact actively discouraged,research and writing. I worked under very negative conditions at my institution, both at the department level and at the university level. ESL was considered a service field, and ESL instructors were expected to teach a heavier-thannormal load, attend many meetings, do quasi-administrative work, work on curricula, organize social events, and in general put in long hours. Efforts to do research were actively discouraged; for instance, teachers (including me, on at least two occasions) who asked to teach a certain class again in order to follow up on initiated research were purposely 8: On Beginning toWrite at 40 117 assigned to completely different classes.Although we were full-time faculty , and grateful for that status, we suffered many of the indignities that part-time faculty in our, and other, fields so often face: heavier teaching loads than other faculty had, desks in a shared room rather than private offices, no individual telephones, no access to research or travel funds, low status. Even worse than the specifics of this negative situation was the hostile attitude of the administrators at the time; they not only did not attempt to improve working conditions, but thought that the conditions were perfectly appropriate for the faculty, and believed that the faculty should be grateful for having their jobs and should not complain. I can’t begin to describe the pain that this difficult and hostile work situation caused my colleagues and me. It was difficult for me, as someone who had had a happy,secure childhood...