How (and Why) to Add Teaching to Your List of Freelance Gigs

Freelancers are just the dose of fresh air that academic departments need to prepare students for the modern media world.

There was a time when I seriously considered going to graduate school and becoming a full-time journalism instructor. I had visions of office hours spent inspiring young minds and talking pedagogy with colleagues over coffee.

But then I realized … I would probably wind up bored as hell after a few years. Teaching three classes per semester (and likely the same three classes every time) would become a grind and I would not be happy at all.

Given this dynamic, I can understand why so many faculty teach their courses the same way semester to semester and year to year. The burnout is real, and you’re so busy lecturing and grading that you don’t have time to even think about making changes to the syllabus.

Teaching the same curriculum might not be a problem if you’re talking about organic chemistry or 19th-century literature, but it is a huge problem in journalism. People in the industry have difficulty keeping up with the pace of change, which leaves academics even more hopelessly behind.

This is where freelancers come in. Unlike many fields, you do not need a Ph.D. to teach journalism as an adjunct. Freelancers are just the dose of fresh air that academic departments need to prepare students for the modern media world. You already have all the skills you need to be successful.

Why should freelancers teach?

I’m not here to say all the clichés from The Chair are true, but the point about some faculty teaching the same course they did in the Reagan administration certainly is. Some J-school faculty haven’t worked in a newsroom since the 80s or 90s, if not longer — and their syllabi reflect it.

I’ve seen (and still see!) way too many references to newspapers and writing stories as if someone is not going to read them until the next day. And production syllabi are written for radio news jobs that don’t exist anymore without even mentioning things like podcasting. Things like mental health and how to deal with online harassment are rarely addressed and need to be talked about more.

Again, I don’t fault full-time faculty for getting caught up in the year-to-year grind that is higher education. But I am here to say that freelancers can bring a fresh perspective to stale curricula and give students a realistic sense of what working in media is like right now.

Here are a few reasons why:

• We’re used to turning things around quickly and can modify lesson plans as we find new examples and ideas.
• We have networks of friends and colleagues to call on as guest speakers.
• We can talk about where the jobs are right now and how much they pay — or don’t pay.
• We can talk about finding story ideas that will resonate with editors today, not editors of generations past.
• We can help students understand what it’s like to exist as a person on the Internet and what that means for working as a journalist.

You might also find that your students are a source of story ideas. You’ll have insight into conversations and perspectives that you probably won’t get otherwise. For example, I got a great story idea about the NCAA’s name, image, likeness policy after talking to a few student athletes and hearing their experiences working through the program and its regulations.

How to get started

Unfortunately, there’s no place like Study Hall that helpfully puts job postings in one place and creates a community for journalism instructors. However, there are a few places that you can look to get started:

Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication: This is the academic organization for journalism instructors. It’s a good place to learn about what’s happening in academia and search for job postings.

Higheredjobs.com: The name speaks for itself. When I wrote this piece in early January 2022, 76 journalism adjunct positions were posted at schools across the country.

Communication and Media Studies Academic Jobs Wiki: This is mostly full-time and/or tenure-track positions, but searching for “lecturer” or “non-tenure” will return at least a few results. It’s also a very comprehensive listing of journalism programs across the U.S. if you want to do some outreach on your own.

Like freelance gigs, not all opportunities will be posted on public job boards. If there is a university in your area and you don’t see any openings, reach out to the journalism or communications department head and ask to be placed in their adjunct pool. Most journalism programs offer introductory writing and production courses that adjuncts often teach.

Another option is to pitch a “special topics” course. These classes are outside the prescribed curriculum and allow instructors to experiment with new subjects and formats. There’s no reason adjuncts can’t get in on the action, especially if you have a perspective to share that’s not currently offered and would benefit students.

Review the curriculum for the program you’d like to teach in and suggest a few classes that align with your skillset. Based on my experience, deans and department heads are a more receptive audience than commissioning editors because there’s not nearly as much competition and they’re hungry for fresh ideas.

How to set yourself up for success

On one level, being a successful teacher means that you deliver educational value to students and use your knowledge and expertise to create a meaningful experience in the classroom. But it’s easy to let those things obscure another important facet of successful teaching — all the work you put into it has to be worth it to you financially.

I’m sure we all remember the early days of freelancing when we jumped on any assignment that came our way, no matter how far off from a real wage it was in the end. It’s easy to do that with teaching, too, especially since the sticker prices can seem high compared to the rate for a story.

According to the American Association of University Professors, the average pay for a part-time instructor teaching a three-credit course is $3,356. This sounds great on paper, but here are a few caveats to keep in mind:

• A standard semester is 15 or 16 weeks. You’ll likely need to put in another week or two on either side of that to prepare at the beginning of the semester and do final grading at the end.
• Grading a writing-intensive course is not the same as grading multiple-choice exams. It takes a lot of time to read a story or paper and give thoughtful feedback.
• The time you spend in the classroom and doing class-related tasks is time that you’re not spending on pitching, reporting, and writing.

With those factors in mind, I would not accept an offer to teach a three-credit course for anything less than $3,000. Anything below that ends up being a wash or even a net loss when you factor in the time away from other sources of income. If you’re teaching a seminar or something less than three credits, you’ll earn less but also have less of a time commitment.

This is, of course, just my perspective. Everyone’s situation is different and I realize that the prospect of a consistent income source that you don’t need to chase down every month might weigh more heavily in some cases.

Either way, once you receive approval to teach, you need to promote yourself to the department and the students to ensure that you’ll be asked back the next semester. Think of it as an extension to the brand you’ve already built as a freelancer.

I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to promote your course, especially if it’s something that students are not required to take. If students don’t sign up for the class, it won’t be offered again, and some departments don’t do a good job of marketing their courses as a whole. Reach out to other faculty in the department and ask if you can visit their classes to plug it; visit student organization meetings to make your pitch.

Decisions about which classes are offered and who teaches them also come from student evaluations. If students raise red flags about an instructor, those evaluations are going to raise red flags with the department. This is a tricky balance to strike and one I still struggle with. You want your students to like you but not give in to them so much that you lose your own integrity just for the sake of a good review at the end of the semester.

It’s really important to set boundaries and stick to them. Otherwise, some students will see an opportunity to walk over you — and take it. My experience has generally been that if you’re fair with students in the class, they’re fair back to you in their reviews.

A case study: How I did it

I’ve been teaching at Penn State since 2014. I started out teaching basic news writing and reporting and, over time, got to develop courses on freelancing and the creator economy. I’ve also had the opportunity to rewrite course curricula and contribute to the overall direction of the journalism program.

During the six years I taught newswriting, I started to see the disconnect between what we covered in the curriculum and what was happening in the media industry as podcasts, YouTube, and Substack provided more opportunities for journalists to support themselves independently.  At the same time, the entrepreneurship craze was sweeping universities and mine was eager for content that incorporated an entrepreneurial approach.

Thanks to feedback and resources from Study Hall and other communities, I developed a course proposal for a seminar on independent content creation. The proposal was approved and I’m teaching the class for the second time this semester, with plans to develop an online version for alumni to take for professional development.

I also took the content I developed and pitched a version of it to a graduate program for humanities students at the University of Chicago. I heard from a colleague that they were looking for someone to talk about opportunities in the creator economy for people with advanced degrees.

Unlike my undergraduate course, this program is entirely virtual. It’s one of many opportunities to teach that have opened up since the pandemic started. Many programs, both academic and for professional development, are opening up their course offerings to anyone who wants to pay the fee and tune in online.

As much as we’ve developed a love-hate relationship with Zoom, I don’t see this mode of virtual instruction going away, especially if it’s profitable for the institutions offering the courses. The list of organizations offering virtual teaching opportunities is too long to list here, but it’s worth keeping in mind as you explore your options.

Finally, outlets like Skillshare and Teachable allow you to create and market your own courses. These could be good options if you already have a large following or don’t want to conform to an academic syllabus.

In many ways, I’m much happier now than I would have been as a full-time faculty member. But there’s nothing extraordinary about what I did or how I got here.

Anyone who subscribes to Study Hall has something meaningful to share with journalism and communications students. I hope this piece serves as both the guide to approaching teaching and the motivation to make it happen this year.

---