Garfield Gleanings

by Caroline DePiro

Garfield Campus Steward

Well, here we are halfway through the semester and either your students are really "getting it" at this point, or they're beginning to feel the pressure of the increased level of complexity within our textbooks as we've now long since passed reviewing and have gotten through most of the easily digestible material. Many of us are now reaching the stage where our students start to realize that everything just got quite a bit harder. However, as we've done semester after semester, we will do our best to simplify, explain and practice until our students manage to grasp the most difficult concepts within their respective levels. We will do all this while still managing to find time to prepare them for their writing exams, their speaking exams, their Casas exams, as well as the El Civics testing component coming up for some of us next week.

So, if all that classroom business wasn’t enough, and if you ever manage to get a chance to glance at your Inbox with so much to do, you will note that there are many things that have been going on at Garfield.

Here are just a few listed below:

Our Guild President Zohara Kaye, sent a message out recently announcing that GCC’s faculty union (the Guild) and GCC’s classified staff union (CSEA) would like to come out in support of the national movement called Campus Equity Week (CEW) October 26-30. CEW is intended to bring awareness about the inadequate compensation and benefits of our part-time/adjunct faculty nationwide, with the goal of achieving fair and equitable treatment for adjunct faculty.

In support of CEW, the union asked that everyone – full-timers, adjuncts, classified staff, students, and even administrators – wear red or scarlet on Wednesday, October 28, 2015. One Garfield teacher, Kathy Grammar went as far as to teach her students about CEW. Look at this pic!

Rosemarie Shamieh has sent an email reminding us all about the Pre-Owned Book Sale intended to provide Garfield campus students the opportunity to purchase pre-owned educational and entertaining books for next to nothing. The proceeds will go towards our graduation fund. The Pre-Owned Book Sale will take place Thursday, November 5 from 10 a.m.-1 p.m. in MP103.

Megan Ernst sent a message out with some great news about an upcoming Flex opportunity:

Bill Bliss, co-author of Foundations, Side by Side, and Voices of Freedom, will be coming to the Garfield Campus on Tuesday, November 17 from 12:00 to 1:00 p.m. Lunch will be served.

Deb Kinley sent a message today letting us know that she is working on a Banner project aimed at marketing to prospective students. The banners will hang vertically from the lampposts and will appear similar to the ones seen at the main campus. One side will have a photograph and the other side will have important information about our programs offered in Noncredit.  The cost of each banner is $250 and she encouraged us to raise money and/or create groups that work together to sponsor a banner. See attached flier.

Alfred Ramirez held a Garfield Campus Information meeting on October 28. For those of you who were unable to attend, a few things stood out from that meeting for me:

• Parking: Many expressed frustration and a few ideas were suggested. However, for now, it looks as though nothing is going to change.

• SAFETY: First, we watched a video produced by Homeland Security. Then, Samir Abou-Rass from the Glendale College Police Department spoke to us about what to do in the case of an active shooter. He admitted the best thing to do is to lock down. He said that what he would like to see would be locks that work on the inside and the outside of our classroom doors. The new building on the main campus will probably have those locks put in but the rest of us will have to wait to see if we can get them someday in the future. The rest of the presentation was about being mentally prepared for any situation, having a plan, making sure you have all necessary emergency numbers, registering on GCC’s emergency notification system, not hesitating to alert the police of any student that seems a little off, and they spoke about an upcoming Citizen’s Academy program that anyone can become a part of.

• Restroom keys/locks: no progress has been made in finding a solution that will work so that all faculty can have ready access to the faculty bathrooms. Some ideas were discussed but nothing was resolved. Alfred said he would look into keypads for the bathrooms.

• Air Conditioning: It appears to be an ongoing saga of programming and gauges, etc. They are working on it. As soon as one thing is fixed, another problem seems to appear but I must say that our administrators have been taking it seriously and are committed to trying to get it right. For now, report problems to your division secretary.

• Future plans:

- Customer service training for faculty and staff

- More signs all around Garfield

- The new TV monitor above the elevator will most likely play informational videos about what’s offered at Garfield

- An adjunct counselor will be hired to work with students with disabilities

- Possibly veteran services will be added

- Space: Alfred is looking into leasing or buying space for more classes. He’s looking into possibilities near Garfield, in the Montrose area, and potentially in West Glendale near San Fernando.

As your Garfield Guild Steward, I am happy to report what is going on around Garfield. However, I wish I had a news for you in regards to a nice big raise or office hours for Non-credit adjuncts. It would be nice to tell you about increased sub pay, more steps and columns, more overload pay, a better re-hire rights policy for adjuncts, and then some. If nothing else, you can be certain that with the amount of money coming in from Sacramento this year, a raise is definitely in the works and a few of those other things might actually come through as well. However, the devil is in the details. For now, we squabble over how much of any raise will actually be permanent and how much will be temporary. Of course, your union leadership is going to continue to work to see that as much of the money remains permanent as is possible. For now, send us good luck and stay tuned.

Caroline DePiro
Noncredit ESL Instructor
Garfield Guild Steward

   Follow @GCCGuild

 Visit us on the web: www.glendale.edu/guild and http://gccguild.org

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