I began work as an adjunct faculty at Solano Community College in 1981. Solano served its region not just through campus offerings, but through contractual arrangements with state and federal government.
Nearby Travis Air Force Base to the east and the Mare Island Naval ship repair site to the west provided college coursework for enlisted personnel. The California Medical Facility at Vacaville, a maximum security psychiatric prison, had installed college coursework as part of a legislative incline toward rehabilitation.
English Composition 101 was a requirement. I would eventually teach as many as three sections of Comp 101 per semester with enrollment capped at 25.
To start I was scheduled to teach six units in the Solano reading and study skills clinic per semester, working alongside a veteran, Ivan Cohen, a full-time, tenured professor whose entire workload (15 units) was allocated to the clinic.
Clinic hours were 8am -12am M-Th. Ivan and I manned the clinic during those hours. Ivan held an office hour after clinic. As a part-timer, I did not have to.
A dear man with a genuine desire to help his students, Ivan billed the clinic in the catalogue as a “study skills” center and had little substantive contact with students beyond giving directions and filing records. His specialty was “speed reading,” which he freely conceded was akin to “purposeful scanning and skimming.”
“I don’t think they need to read faster,” I argued. “They need permission to slow down and vary their speed and starting thinking.”
Ivan welcomed the pushback. He had grown weary of the slow pace of progress. He became a great colleague as we talked incessantly about what we were hearing and seeing in the lab—we called it a lab. It was a treat to watch him scurry among the students as they sought his help for definitions, for pronunciations, for advice.
Students self-selected reading material in the lab, they completed then-current skills-driven exercises with multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching, etc. Those who had reading assignments related to coursework had access to others, peers and teachers.
Ivan and I successfully petitioned our Department Chair for funds to hire two student assistants. Ivan would interview and select his assistant; I would do the same.
Ivan brought a nursing student on board, a highly organized and smart young woman who contributed to the efficiency and management of the lab; she was a cheerful taskmaster for our students. I hired Elias, a young man of Mexican heritage who had been caught up in the remedial machinery for several semesters.
Elias had been referred to the clinic semesters ago to improve his “study skills” as a result of intake assessments. He had profited from his work on campus and in the lab and was grateful. But he was acutely aware of the culture of remediation and deficit that weighed heavily on him and his peers, a culture of academic intimidation and threat.
Both Elias and Terri became integral to the lab over the next few semesters and established a current-tradition of resourcing positions for peer instructional assistants to work in substantive ways—much like instructional aids in k-12 schools are now expected to work with students rather than with photocopiers, computers, records, and materials.
Elias and I came to speak frankly about the academic world. We were close in age. He was excited, full of energy, when it came to his peers in the lab. Ivan and I asked him to mentor students who seemed overwhelmed or on the verge of tuning out. I recall with great fondness the fire in his hazel eyes, the spring in his step in the lab, the sense of urgency and seriousness he brought to his formal interactions with peers.
By 1986 I earned a Reading Specialist Credential from the CCCC plus more, a Multiple Subjects credential and a Single Subject credential in English. That summer I applied for elementary school teaching positions throughout the Sacramento region. My field of vision would soon change.