I let out quite a chuckle when I saw this picture. I’ve been there and I’ve made that face.
*Disclaimer* This blog is not meant to imply that teachers do not appreciate learning. It is also not intended to imply that we are ‘lazy’, ‘unprofessional’ or the like. We wouldn’t be in education if we didn’t appreciate its value. What we don’t appreciate is receiving the exact same training year after year. That’s not Professional Development. That’s insulting. As far as those looking for examples on what could be done during In-Service, please read my other blog entitled ‘Get on the Bus’. Any and all comments which use bad language, insult another who comments by name calling, etc. will not be posted. *
It got me to thinking…teachers are required to attend Inservice “training” before school. It’s always dreaded and I, personally, would rather have a cavity filled than sit 3 days in a hard wooden chair, rehashing the same things year after year after year after…you get the picture. What if teachers were in change of Inservice? What would we do away with if we could suggest anything and people in charge would listen? Ohhh, the possibilities…..
1. Please do not give us binders full of materials we will probably never use because YOU (the planner) attended a training and decided it was awesome. Honestly, just give us an empty binder. That’s what is going to happen anyway. We listen to your synopsis, trying our best not to roll our eyes or poke the person next to us, and then, when it’s over, in the hidden comfort of our room, we are going to throw away these copies and use the binder. Save a tree. Just give us the binder, say you went to a conference and let’s move on. Time saved: 1 hour.
2. Please do not read your PowerPoint presentation to us. At some point in time, we’ve all proven we are literate. Also, doubly, please do not put said PowerPoint presentation in aforementioned binder we will not use. Just don’t. Time saved: 30 minutes.
3. No, we do not want to change how we teach AGAIN because so and so came out with a new technique which looks familiarly like the one we used several years ago until a new technique came out and we used that. And for goodness sakes, please, please, we don’t need another laminated copy of Bloom’s taxonomy. Nope. Time saved: Up to a day. Literally.
4. I like my coworkers, and heck, I even love some that I’ve known a while, but I don’t want to hold yarn in a shape with them and throw a ball around until it falls through a hole. You REALLY want work place bonding? Break us into groups, give us a list of clues and tell us there’s a pay raise hidden somewhere on campus. Oh yeah, you’ll see some bonding, and some true colors come out. Time saved: 1 hour, We’re bonded and richer
5. What we despise? Really, really loathe. Think-Pair-Share = No. You know what’s going to happen? You think we’re sitting around talking about your binder, and your PowerPoint (in the binder) and how much we loved the yarn activity, when really, we’re talking about where we’re going to for lunch. You can call on us and we’ll make something up on the fly that sounds relevant if you need us to do that. We’re teachers, remember? We are experts of thinking off the cuff. We’re still throwing away your binder, and now we know we’re having Mexican food for lunch. You can’t come. Time saved: 30 minutes.
6. Why ask us what the Campus Mission Statement and goals should be if the Mission Statement and goals have not changed in 20 years? Hand us a copy, we’ll grunt in agreement, and we’re done. Please don’t give us a copy and ask us to Think-Pair-Share with the group about these things. We care about as much as the students care that the floors are waxed. Time saved: At least an hour.
7. We know you want us to get into the groove ASAP with our ISPs and our plans for those in DAEP and ISS. We see we have scheduled ARDs or have paperwork on students that have a BIP. We also need to look at our STAAR scores, but the 411 is that we are A-OK with actually saying the words. Time saved: Not really applicable, but at least everyone can keep up with what’s being said.
And last, but not least…
8. We are not statisticians. Some of us may be able to do statistics under threat, but what we really want to know, in caveman speak even, is ‘You do good’ or ‘You do bad’. That’s it. We are relatively easy to please. Please do not hand us copies of every single test ever taken in the last 15 years and ask us to create and graph the distribution. This is when we suddenly get an ‘urgent’ phone call, or stomach troubles. (By the way, we’re all hanging out in the bathroom, rolling our eyes, heavily sighing, and walking very, very slowly). Time saved: 1 hour
marvelous teacher musings 
I taught in a low social economic area and we always had these types of inservices. However, one year someone in charge had the very best one when he invited a student to talk to us. This person had gone K-12 in the district, graduated and went on to graduate college. Her speech did not mention statistics or state tests, but instead the highlights of the things her teachers had done with the students.to help them learn, want to learn more, and reach beyond.
I actually think that is a fantastic idea. Great way to hear what worked best and worst with the actual students, from one who has gone past BEUING a student.
As a parent of 3 now-grown-college-sons I always wondered WHAT was going on during the in-service training days..Seems like as the years went by there were more and more of them..Which in turn took off school calendar days..Interesting to hear from a teacher the inside scoop! Thanks for sharing..YOU get a gold star for this excellent write..2 thumbs UP
Teacher in-service days have never taken the place of school calendar days. The days in school for students is 180 days and for teachers it’s 190 days.
Not always true. This year, students attend school 172, staff 185; last year was 7 days less time with kids (165). That’s not counting the 2 weeks state testing and the 6-8 days doing short-cycle assessments. I have about 155 teaching days with my learning disabled students.
Our inservice was great this year – we actually got time to plan the first couple of weeks of lessons with peers from our/other schools. But usually, the training is designed for kids who are in the upper 50% group – I learn from them, but there’s usually not a lot I can take back to the classroom and use with my kids. The trainers usually respond to my requests with something like “You need to ask SpEd to get you guys a trainer.” Frustrating.
Icing on the cake? NM just decided 50% of our professional evaluation will be on test scores. Did I mention I teach students who don’t have real strong skills….?
What should happen:
Teachers should be able to attend stipended self-selected CE unit classes that can be scheduled at the teacher’s discretion during summer break. I have actually done some of these with MUCH more learned than any district inservice ever attended.
Everyone at Microsoft who ever had anything to do with Powerpoint should be shot, drawn, and quartered (and it’s not just teachers, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t despise ppt).
Every teacher should have at least three paid days before school starts to prepare. I don’t know about you, but in one way or another I work a full week before school starts and get paid for one day, half of which is spent in a staff meeting.
Well… I can dream… 😉
At least you get paid something. Most of us spend several days getting our classrooms ready and receive no compensation at all.
Add to that if for any reason the students are of a culture distictly different from their teachers, there should be an introductory session to introduce tnew teachers to some of the differences. I say this from personal experience, having had the good fortune of having teachers who had worked at the school I was going to fr years let me know small thngs, like if you were upset with the chikld it was considered disrepectful for them to look at you, and if a child needed something it was considered selfish for them to tell you themselves. Knowing the differences can help us find ways to work with them. Not knowing the differences can help us find ways to demoralize our students and make teaching them THAT much harder.
I am the mother of four children, two now in college. I worked a full time job before my children were born. I was in charge of training for a large company and designed and implemented training programs for hundreds of employees. ALWAYS I spent many, many hours and days unpaid to prepare my classes. Everyone did and still does. It was our job, to get the programs ready to teach. We had to please our customer, often the government, and if we didn’t, heads would roll. We would never have thought of asking to be paid, it was our job. I think it is noteworthy to mention that thousands of people who have careers do this on a daily basis, always have and always will. It is often that my husband is up at the wee hours finishing his work, unpaid. It is part of being a responsible employee. Please don’t think that everyone is paid for every minute that they work. It is just not true!
This is so true. As a new school principal (and having been an assistant principal for several years), I can say that it blows my mind when teachers show up on the first day of staff development and seem bent out of shape because they have to learn something and can’t work in their rooms! They can do like I did when I was a teacher and practically LIVE in their rooms during the summer getting things ready. It NEVER should be a ‘I will do it if I get paid” issue. To be fair- most are happy to do whatever is planned. I try not to bore or repeat from the year before- even I think that is bad!
We would show up earlier to epwork in our rooms if the floors weren’t always being waxed and no teachers allowed in the building!!!!
Yep. Us too.
I find your response seriously disturbing. This kind of thinking is wrong.
I am a salaried professional and I behave as such. I do what I have to do to get my job done extremely well. Any administrator who expects me to LIVE in my room during the summer (off contract) is unprofessional. Abuse of staff in any workplace is not professional nor admirable or effective.
While I do not expect that I should be working in my room instead of learning and growing as a professional, when poorly planned professional development has been scheduled, I do longingly think of the many tasks I could be accomplishing instead of wasting my time in a redundant seminar on pedagogy for which the district has no real commitment to implement.
I couldn’t agree with you more! I posted something similar regarding Allison’s post.
I agree 100%. I also know many teachers who are not even allowed in to their buildings until mid-August! How ridiculous is that?
It blows my mind that someone that thinks like you is in charge. This is the type of thought process that drives employees to distrust and despise you. Don’t forget, they are on contract certain days. You sound like you make donation of time mandatory. I hope that you are reported to HR and the school board for abuse of power if this is truly how you treat your teachers.
I find your comment “bent out of shape because they have to learn something” highly insulting for a “school principal!” I’ve been teaching 18 years, and I can count the number of things I’ve learned in teacher inservice on one hand. You are talking about professional adults! What do you plan to teach that most of the teachers who are on your staff – probably most of them are experienced – need to learn? In our school district, our inservice will deal with state testing results as it does every single year.
I worked many jobs before teaching. I managed and worked at several different retail stores, waited tables, managed the books for my ex’s construction company and owned a retail store, You are correct that many people put in countless hours where they do not get paid. However, there salary usually compensates for those extra hours or you qualify for bonuses. It is not like that in teacher. In the state I teach in, we were given a 1/2% decrease in pay that was retroactive when the bottom fell out. That is illegal in the business world. Likewise, 7 years later, we finally received a raise of 1%. Now add to that that we regularly pay for items in our classroom. I know that this summer I have spent close to $500 on supplies for the room. That is typically not done in the business world without reimbursement. I was offered a job straight out of college doing the job you described. I know back in 1992, the company that offered me the job was offering a starting salary of $80K with all travel expenses covered. I will never see that amount of money. While I teach because I love what I do, it would be nice to not have to work two jobs to afford a house in the low rent section and a compact car payment. It would be nice to be able to afford a vacation. It would be even better if I could afford to help my children with college. As a single mom with 2 children, those things will never be accessible to me while I am a teacher in this state. Teachers do not think that every employee gets paid for what they do, but in what other job do you have someone else’s future in your hands in the way that a teacher does? Yet society thinks that when we ask for just compensation that we are whiners and complainers. I LOVE my job. I do it for that reason, however, I am now at a point where I am forced to consider other careers, not because I can’t do my job or I hate what I do, but because I cannot continue to do my job and eek out a living.
I think the biggest issue is that I also work into the wee hours, but truth be told, I probably make half of what your husband does. Don’t judge!
From a school administrator: we have to come up with a way that is better than this to assure that YOU don’t just read from your PowerPoint to your students (classrooms bring rife with this mistake lately), that you understand FERPA privacy violations and IEP lapses so that you don’t make any (which bring lawyers and advocates to our campus, which YOU do not have to deal with, but WE do, and endlessly), so that you understand what to do in crisis situations (which saved dozens of Sandy Hook children’s lives), and very importantly, how to ACCESS and USE all that data we are now required to collect via the excess of testing we don’t like any more than you do but should be used somehow. Very, very few teachers use that data and they must be taught to do so, or the whole 21st century US education intubation is tragic.
How should we do this?
Interactive computer assited education modules to use a multimedia approach to show what is needed, show it put to use, and show alternatives?
@Syd G: I am going to assume that you are a good administrator. I will say, however, that items you discussed such as safety (i.e. Sandy Hook ), IEPs, etc. are not typically reviewed at my high school during in-service days. This list is hilarious because it is TRUE! From my years of experience, I saw that my administrators were poor teachers. Now, they are poor (and overpaid) administrators. I mean, if administrators were such great teachers themselves and excelled in the classroom, they would still be in the classroom. And, as far as teachers reading from PowerPoint presentations in their classrooms, perhaps they are simply just doing what was modeled for them by their ever-so-wise administrators. Yes, those administrators I discussed before…the ones who would still be in the classroom if they were good teachers. Of course, as I said from the beginning, I am going to assume you are a good administrator. But, well, you know the old saying…
By the way, I saw it suggested that this list be presented as an “icebreaker” PowerPoint when teachers return for in-service days. Better yet, give the teachers a binder filled with this accurate list / presentation so they have something NEW to read. Oh, and the teachers will keep the binder’s contents and reread the contents again and again…guaranteed.
There are many reasons why good teachers might leave the classroom, including searching for new challenges, more money, more influence, and the idea…crazy, I know…that they might go good more broadly. A hallmark of good teaching is empathy, and you displayed very little of that in your post.
Hey Sid, How about you go over the legal stuff that’s required with all teachers and tell us exactly what we need to know. Put the documents on the school server along with a test and have the teachers take the test to prove they know the laws, regulations, etc.
As for the professional development part… administrators are always saying we teachers have to differentiate instruction and individualize to meet all student’s needs. How about you do the same? You already KNOW who does a good job and who doesn’t. And guess what–so do we. Take all the teachers who “need assistance” and teach them how to frame the lesson, ask seed questions, etc. Let the others go work in their subject-area teams to work on all the extra tasks you’ll tack on to everything else we’re required to do. All of that TAKES TIME. Time is something admin RARELY if ever gives to teachers. That is all we are asking for.
So, what would happen if teachers did planned the inservice? What would be useful and helpful? Just wondering.
If teachers could plan inservices they would:
1) Talk to other teachers on their grade level teams. They would discuss their upcoming students needs, organize and plan units, lessons, activities, & materials necessary for the first week & month of classes. Complain about the school schedule (“Our class has to eat lunch at 10:00?”)
2) Decide whose turn is it to buy the ink cartridges & when. (Who wants Aug, Sept, etc?) There’s only 1 printer for 10 teachers and no ink cartridge budget.
3.) Search for lost stuff. Teachers would search the halls, other classrooms, trash bins, closets for missing furniture, a.v. equipment, computer cables, books- anything that wasn’t locked up or taken home over the summer.
4) Clean their classrooms & furniture so kids can sit on chairs without dust & work at tables & desks without getting soot all over them.
5) Speed dialing the tech support person. The new software required for day one is not compatible with the old computers, printers, or white board. There is only 1 tech support person for 10 schools because the superintendent fired all but 2 so he could pay a private firm hundreds of thousands of dollars (e.g. http://www.parthenon.com/) to tell him how to fire more school personnel.
THAT was an awesome post. Amazing, the universality of it all.
Exactly! And let’s pay the less than living wage copy person to work the full week so we don’t have to make midnight runs to Kinkos.
Read research on teaching your subject or age group. Spend time applying it to lessons. Meet with subject-level teams to complete all the paperwork requirements BEFORE school starts. Research your new students’ backgrounds so you can figure out more quickly how to help them learn in your classroom. Write lesson plans. Organize lab equipment. Try NEW activities. Look up new ways to teach old ideas. Make a word wall. Make cards or other items for use with Kagan structures. The list could go on and on and on…
Even better, as one poster said… pay us more and let each of us choose our OWN professional development workshops (from an approved list, of course). Then we could go to professional meetings, or take a college course, or study abroad.
did plan I mean. . .
If teachers could plan inservices they would:
1) Talk to other teachers on their grade level teams. They would discuss their upcoming students needs, organize and plan units, lessons, activities, & materials necessary for the first week & month of classes. Complain about the school schedule (“Our class has to eat lunch at 10:00?”)
2) Decide whose turn is it to buy the ink cartridges & when. (Who wants Aug, Sept, etc?) There’s only 1 printer for 10 teachers and no ink cartridge budget.
3.) Search for lost stuff. Teachers would search the halls, other classrooms, trash bins, closets for missing furniture, a.v. equipment, computer cables, books- anything that wasn’t locked up or taken home over the summer.
4) Clean their classrooms & furniture so kids can sit on chairs without dust & work at tables & desks without getting soot all over them.
5) Speed dialing the tech support person. The new software required for day one is not compatible with the old computers, printers, or white board. There is only 1 tech support person for 10 schools because the superintendent fired all but 2 so he could pay a private firm hundreds of thousands of dollars (e.g. http://www.parthenon.com/) to tell him how to fire more school personnel.
This assessment is a perfect analogy however I believe that certain teachers do need retraining and need to learn new ways to actually keep pupils like myself interested. Without new techniques being passed onto teachers, education will fail because students will not have the interest to listen and learn. Planners need to create new content (unlike the rubbish you say they give you year after year). I am totally in agreement with you!
Students need to have the self-discipline to want to learn and to better themselves. It’s not always about how interesting the teacher makes it, some subjects are just not that interesting, especially mandatory credits in college! You have to value your education and care about doing well. I did when I was a student in all through elementary, middle, and high school, add well as, under-grad and grad.
Agree! Teaching is the only profession where SOME think that once you get a job, you think you are at the end of your learning/training and anyone who tries to teach you something new, well, I pity the fool…!
If the subject isn’t interesting or meaningful, why did someone major in it in college? Why did we decide to teach it? I would say, given some effort, that most everything can be made either interesting or relevent…and if you give students purpose you are well on the way to getting them to invest in their own learning.
While I agree that one must value his/her education I have had teachers that did work hard to make their subject interesting and because of that I was interested more than I would have been otherwise.
Good for you for being better than the other typical children in your past, but teachers, today have larger classes with varying degrees of interest and drive. But you can’t put everyone in your box ( and that is one large problem with what people expect from teachers,now, to put everyone in the same sized/shaped box)
Students who move on to college understand they have to sit through the boring, that’s one reason why they’re moving on to college.
It behooves us to try to, also, reach those students with potential and little drive.
We teach them to care…but no one is going to care if the educator in front of them doesn’t care enough to try to reach them.
I think we DO reach those students with potential and a little drive. They’re the easy ones. It’s the ones who lack one (or both) of those traits that make us look like we don’t care, or aren’t challenging our classes, or aren’t “interesting” enough. Believe me, there wasn’t a single thing I could have done to interest some of my junior girls in parabolas. Maybe if Justin Bieber did a song about them…
It’s been my experience after 30 years in education that the presentations given by my principals would receive very low scores if the same evaluation standards used to evaluate my lessons were used. Be the same presenter you look for me to be each day in my classroom.
Amen!!!!!
I totally agree Karen. I teach to the bell. I am always “counted off” on closure, but I have as yet to experience any presenter in staff development providing the kind of closure they expect from us. When I mentioned this to my principal, she looked surprised and insisted she always provides it. Nope, never.
First, congrats on being Freshly Pressed. Second, thank you for this post. You hit all eight nails on the head — and so much of it must be said, must be shouted from the top of our lungs. And third, many, many thanks for addressing one of my biggest pet peeves: PowerPoint reading. Well done!
Another topic to add to your list – please don’t make us watch yet another “blood-born pathogens video. Give us a brief pre-test (like we are supposed to give our students) and when we can all answer 1) use gloves, 2) call the nurse and/or custodian, 3) double bag and dispose of properly, and 4) wash your hands – declare us competent and move on! Time saved – at least 30 minutes!
Now that I am retired I can speak frankly about all the BS I waded through in 38 years of teaching. I would always dread, and I mean the kind of dread they must have felt in the Stalinist gulags, before each teacher training or workshop each year. I think teachers like writers or pro athletes are born with the talent to write or throw a ball or teach. Of course we can learn, but I learned how to teach from great teachers and from my students. The best thing about teaching is the fact that almost every day of my life a kid I taught comes up to me and says hello and that they liked my class. It makes all the worthless inservices bearable.
Wow. This negative before the school year even starts! Guess I’m the only person who takes notes on those ppt presentations (even if it’s boring) and doesn’t throw out what is given to us as soon as the in-service is done. We have to be given certain information before school begins and there is no easy/interesting way to do it that would please everyone. So this year, instead of the rolling of the eyes, be empathetic to your presenter; it’s a thankless job and it takes many unpaid hours of preparation while most of us are still on summer break. I challenge all of us, as professionals, to try…really try…to take away at least one positive thought during in-service training and keep the curmudgeons (killjoys, wet blankets) at bay.
I’d like to marry you right now!!! 🙂 glad to hear some people value what happens at training. Inevitably year after year my staff says they want “choose your own adventure” pd training days but when I try to find staff to take a topic to teach their peers I get crickets. We plan our pd days based on teacher feedback and student assessment data. If I have a grade level that only showed 44% proficiency on standardized reading assessments of course WE have to address that and delve into best practices. Is it presumptuous to assume that when over half the students aren’t achieving we need to look at core instruction? Yes. Is it uncomfortable and leaves people feeling naked to the core? Yes. but we can’t simply ignore data because someone says “I don’t need pd because Ive already heard it all” my staff works their butt off….they love kids and are genuinely caring people but when scores don’t reflect that we have to dig deep. When I ask to analyze what happened I’m dang excited to hear “maybe there’s a different way I could have taught _____”. We have to constantly question the status quo to get to the top. Bottom line? No matter what role you play in a school district we all have one thing in common…we love kids.
Melissa, teachers do value what happens at training if it’s valuable training. That’s the point of the rather tongue in cheek original posting. It was funny but obviously, there is a strong element of truth to it to get the responses it has received. Of course, some teachers will tune out anything and everything because they just want to be in their classroom setting up. What really bothers me in any in-service is the absolutely rude behavior of teachers who sit and chat with each other throughout the whole presentation. It’s distracting to me and rude to the presenter. Teachers really can be
the worst audiences. Presenters should expect the same behavior from their teacher audience as teachers expect from their students. You don’t talk when someone else is speaking! Of course, if your scores are as bad as you stated, you’d better do something to address it. I think more than anything, this is a call to admin. or whoever plans in-service to be more aware of what teachers want and need for in-service.
If your grade level is only 44% proficient, before you look at teaching methods, look at ATTENDANCE;. I can plan the greatest lesson in the world, interactive, rich tasks, thought-provoking, real-world applications, a good 4 days, let’s say Wed,. Thurs, Fri, with the kids finishing their projects over the weekend and presenting on Monday. Here’s how it really works: I intro the lesson on Wed, we build to the point where the kids are excited and ready to roll on this great topic. BUT… 3 out of my 25 kids are absent, so they missed the basis for the whole thing. Then Thursday comes, and there’s – take your pick – a snowday, a fire drill that period, a service project that someone forgot to mention, a big science test the period before that is running into my class time, etc. So we miss the 47 allotted minutes on Thursday that we were going to use to really delve into the topic. Now Friday comes, and those 3 kids who were absent Wed. are now back, but 4 more picked up a bug (or, hey, it’s Friday, right?) and my beautiful theoretical lesson is now a mess, with major pieces missing for some kids (“he has our diagram but he’s not here today”). 99% of life is showing up, according to Woody Allen. When the kids don’t, these projects and lessons don’t fly so well.
One of the reasons I became a teacher is because I LOVE learning. Learning is the operative word here. As someone said earlier, I have a master’s degree. I can actually read! Don’t read a ppt to me. Talk to me about how I am going to change my entire curriculum to fit in with common core! I want and need to learn new things!
Here here!
Very very true. Glad someone said it
I am a very lucky teacher, because I work in a district that does allow for a lot of teacher input into our inservice training. I’m lucky because my district doesn’t try to cram in all the training on IEPs, new laws, new mandates, the new teacher assessments and how to analyze and use all of the data all in the week before school starts. Our administrators are smart enough to allow us to work within our schools and within our grade levels.
They ask for input, they listen, they give us goals and they work with us to facilitate things so that we actually reach those goals.
And they are pretty good about avoiding the latest buzzwords while they work with us!
Where do you teach and are there any openings?:) Just kidding. That sounds great. You have smart admin. at your school.
I would appreciate choices during ‘in-service’ or ‘professional development days’. I know what I am weak in or what new ‘strategies’ of which I would like to learn. I don’t need to hash statistics, we do that in department meetings. Also, as a professional, I am capable of finding resources during the school year if I have questions about how to use a particular method or strategy. At the start of the school year the best professional development is time for me to organize my room, prepare initial worksheets, touch base with the resource and collaborative teachers and to get ready to teach again. I don’t mind a couple of meetings during the week, but more than two is overkill. Let us get ready for the students.
Omg! Too funny!
I must say that while much of what is presented here is TRUE, my district has been asking our pdd team to survey US to find out what we WANT. We are helping to design some of the inservices. Also, they have been bringing in students to share much of what they have worked on during the year, whether it was their slam poetry group, or building a thatch hut or doing some sort of community drive. This at least shows what teachers at other levels are doing. It has broken up the boredom and moved past the same old Mundane. One of our recent speakers spoke about the job of a Kindergarten teacher (which I am) and he was so dead on, I was crying and laughing with tears coming down my face. So Kudos to Timberlane!!!!
The best inservice I ever attended was when we teachers threw out the material given and actually shared among us what we were doing that worked with whom. It was a great time, effectively “teambuilt,” and did not require me to drink an entire 20 ounce of Coca-Cola.
I can’t stop laughing! and couldn’t agree more. Can you do our “in-services”? Please!!!
Dang. You nailed it.
Dear “OCD Teacher, Chef….”
I taught in Los Angeles public schools for 10+ years and you have really hit the proverbial nail on the head. I know teach at an international school in Asia. Inservice here is not perfect, but remarkably better than what I experienced in Los Angeles. Thank you for your laugh out loud commentary. It made my morning!
Hilarious and true.
Reblogged this on limfablog and commented:
It’s all true…and useful! Thanks for posting.
Vero e utile prontuario dei “do not” delle presentazioni.
Reblogged this on Sarah Solmonson's Blog and commented:
This is brilliant! Made me shudder to remember my inservice days…at one school, they told us our inservice day was a teacher appreciation day, and we were so lucky to be getting paid to be there! What’s lucky about sitting in uncomfortable seating for 8 hours and learning techniques and skills that our director (who had been in the business for 20+ years and therefore would never be open to new ideas) would never let us incorporate. I miss the kids, but I’ll never miss the politics!
Reblogged this on thefreshmanexperience and commented:
I concur.
Reblogged this on Ramblings From Around the World and commented:
As a new school year starts for me I thought it was about time I began to update this site again. I’ve got a few posts in the works which will hopefully find themselves published on here very soon!
For today, this is a gem I found on Freshly Pressed which basically sums up my day today. Same old, same old training days…..sigh….
I love this!
Reblogged this on emmatheanonymous1234 and commented:
Hahaha! I can certainly relate.
Reblogged this on Thoughts from the bar stool and commented:
Teachers really do need to grow a pair, stand up and say this training is a load of bollocks, as well as being a waste of their time & our money.
The teachers I have met, for the most part have been rampantly enthusiastic about delivering their subjects, yet ground down by the administrative BS they’re forced to put up with on a daily basis.
The only thing people really care about are exam results. It’s not the trendy thing to say, but that’s the bottom line. That is what opens the next door in the educational process or getting that all important first job.
The National Curriculum is overdue for scrapping. Let’s get the shackles off teachers, allow their professionalism to come to the fore and inspire kids to do well.