The teachers with thirty minutes experience are gearing up for their big day of staff development. I was told I was mean for calling them that. I can't help it. It's true. Imagine someone knowing something for thirty minutes trying to train someone who has been doing the stuff for thirty years. Of course these young ones claim they would rather listen to the more experienced teacher, and I am sure many of them would. But,we aren't the ones taking all those administrative courses. We aren't the ones trying to get in good with the administration. We are just the ones teaching our classes on a daily basis, watching the slow decline of the educational system in NY.
I used to be asked to do things for staff development. The problem the administration had with me was that I wanted to be paid for my time preparing for the staff development. I really didn't think this was too much to ask. At one time, they paid some outside consultant a fortune to come in and teach us about discipline. (This consultant had not been in a classroom for over ten years.) My requests were always met with "Sorry, we have no funds available." So I answered, "Sorry, I think I will pass." I feel bad about not passing along some of my knowledge to the newbies but not bad enough to do anything about it. I guess I will just bring a bunch of papers to mark, a magazine to read and hope the day passes quickly.
The rantings of a teacher who retired from the classroom but not from education.
2 comments:
I once had to spend a day with a consultant who was being paid (a lot) to train (coughharangue) us about "student engagement". He READ from a PowerPoint all DAY.
The worst part was that the powerpoint material was on a handout he gave us, and some teachers STILL yelled at him to slow down because they were COPYING things from the powerpoint slides. God, I wanted to kill myself.
It's amazing how stupid some teachers are. No wonder the city gets away with giving us such awful contracts.
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