Letter of the Week: Adjunct professor refuses to protest

I returned to college and attended the University of Missouri-Kansas City at the age of 38, earning an undergraduate degree and master’s degree in administration of justice.

Seven years afterward, I accepted a position as an adjunct in the Criminal Justice and Criminology Department at the university.

I am grateful for the opportunity to apply the education I worked hard to achieve and to be part of a department that I have an enormous amount of respect for.

I am grateful for the hundreds of students in my class. They are the reason I teach, and teaching them is the greatest privilege of my life.

So I did not walk out of my classroom last month as some adjuncts nationwide suggested. I will not wear orange in protest and, most important, because I am grateful, I will not waste precious classroom time discussing politics not related to the subject I teach or worthy of the money my students pay to attend my class.

Rita D. Pearce, of North Kansas City, has been an adjunct professor at UMKC since 2007. Her full-time job is as executive director of the Northland Assistance Center.

This story was originally published March 15, 2015 at 10:00 AM with the headline "Letter of the Week: Adjunct professor refuses to protest."