[NLA] Volunteers and credentials

[Eileen Eckert]

On the capacity-building model of volunteering: I've known several people 
who volunteered as a way in to paid teaching jobs, and it worked. In those 
cases, the path went: volunteer to part-time, part-time to full time. 
However, with about 80-90% of the paid jobs in the field part-time, this 
doesn't seem a viable route for many! So why did they do it? Full-time 
faculty jobs in community-college adult ed programs, though rare, are a step 
up from teacher working conditions in other adult ed. configurations. And 
there is a "field," or at least a field-in-the-making there. But whether 
full- or part-time, adult ed. faculty in community colleges tend to have the 
highest workloads and get the least recognition of the complexity and scope 
of the work they do of all community college faculty (and this probably has 
something to do with the sad but real cases of "not my job" and "I'm the 
expert" phenomenon Debbie mentioned).

On credentialing: College faculty are not credentialed as such (though some 
are hired with credentials from the discipline--e.g., for faculty of social 
work, an LCSW is required), and they enjoy the identity of being a "field". 
What is the relationship between credentialing and professionalization or 
legitimacy as a field? Is there a clear relationship? And is it persuasive 
enough to give up local, program-level control and flexibility in staffing?



>From: AWilder106 at aol.com
>Reply-To: nla at lists.literacytent.org
>To: nla at lists.literacytent.org
>Subject: Re: [NLA] Volunteers and credentials
>Date: Wed, 3 Jul 2002 16:03:46 EDT
>
>Andres,
>
>i buy your part about internships, but as you say we need a field, and that
>comes about I guess through credentialing.  What is a field?
>
>About charity--I like the concept of "justice" or
>"tzedakah"(Hebrew)--supports the idea that anybody could be down and out, 
>not
>their fault, but we have to try to even up the score.
>
>Andrea
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