Great idea, but would like to hear more on how you got the job teaching (saw a posting, contacted the school, what).

So I thought I would follow up with an article detailing my experience with this.

The way that I initially got my start as an educator is both a classic proof of concept for the value in networking and an example of being in the right place at the right time. A number of years ago I worked at a small advertising and marketing firm in the Philadelphia suburbs. This firm happened to contract out photography needs to a small studio in the area. The husband of the studio owner was the Academic Adviser at the School of Digital Design at Philadelphia University at the time, his name was Trevor. Trevor had an emergency need for someone to fill in for an HTML/JavaScript class that was scheduled to start at the end of August so he sent out a request to everyone in his network to see if anyone was interested. This was the first week of August.

The owners of the firm where I worked approached me and asked if I was interested. I had around four years field experience at the time but I could barely speak up during meetings let alone imagine instructing a class full of students. To really convey how afraid I was to speak in front of people let me share this about myself: I stuttered as a child and struggled with it as a young adult especially in high pressure situations. As I grew older I learned to control the stutter by slowing down my speech a little and giving maybe a little too much thought to what I would say before I would say it. At the point I was approached to teach I was still struggling with this, to the point where I would avoid starting sentences with vowels because that is what I had found the most troublesome. I knew that to really advance in my career I would need to conquer that and learn to be comfortable in front of large groups, so what better way than to force myself to do it on a regular basis?

I met with Trevor, he liked me, thought my experience fit, and I agreed to start teaching at the end of the month. It was terrifying and exhilarating, and absolutely life changing.

After my first class was over the University asked me to return to teach the follow up class, ActionScript and Lingo (remember Lingo?). I taught those two classes for a few years, when I noticed a gap in the curriculum. I contacted my Director to propose some new class ideas and he was very receptive, but there wasn't room at the time for those new classes so he put me in contact with the Director of the graduate program who was also very receptive and had me create the classes as electives and independent studies.

Over the years I continued to author new classes and update my existing classes, ActionScript and Lingo became ActionScript 2, which became ActionScript 2 and 3 etc.

So to distill all of that down, the main way that I've seen to get your foot in the door as an adjunct professor is to contact the Academic Advisor or the head of the department, who could very well might be one in the same, at one or more schools where you would be interested in teaching, and see what needs they have for their current curriculum.

If you don't have luck at first don't give up, each school has different criteria that they use, some require advanced degrees for adjuncts, some don't, etc. Also try different departments; I mentioned that one of the departments that I work for is the Digital Design department. When I first started I wasn't sure how I fit in with Digital Design, but it turns out that my University had a great amount of foresight and has been creating digital designers with great client-side development capabilities for as long as I've been teaching there.

Once you are in there and have a good relationship then you can grow that opportunity into something that is mutually beneficial.