Rebecca Webb, CSM Part-Timer Rep.

Rebecca Webb became a CSM Part-Timer Co-Representative to the AFT 1493 Executive Committee last semester. We asked her to introduce herself to Advocate readers. Her introduction is below. -ed.

I have been a part-time English Instructor at CSM for over five years and have been a college instructor for almost two decades. I also have two kids. I started teaching college English in 1994 while working on my M.A. at San Jose State University. As a Ph.D. candidate at Illinois State University, I taught English part-time as a graduate teaching assistant. During that time, the exploitation of part-time teaching labor as well as the increased dependence on adjunct instructors to teach the lower division courses became a national concern.

Throughout my years as an instructor of English, I have watched the rapid decline of new full-time positions and the explosion of part-time, adjunct, temporary, and hourly lecturer labor in the profession of teaching. Now, I find myself in the thick of this dilemma trying to make a living, raise my kids, and fulfill my career goals of being an instructor of English. As your co-part-time representative, I am dedicated to improving the working conditions of part-timers in this district. It is my mission to, at a minimum, improve compensation and the quality of life of part-timer labor, and end the practice of solving the budget crisis on the backs of part-time labor. The profession of teaching is too important to the health of a free society to allow these continued abuses against teachers and the dismantling of our public schools.