Guest Posts on County 10 are provided by contributors and the opinions, thoughts, and comments within are their own and may not necessarily reflect those of County 10.
My late friend Cathleen Galitz and I shared the dim light as the speaker droned on in the front of the room. It was something new, a “motivational speaker” on the last day of school. This bit of administrative insanity is usually forced on the teaching staff during those dreaded first days of school during “staff development.”
This time it was on the final day. I had 35 U.S. history term papers to grade, and Cathleen had an equal number of English papers to finish before we could post final grades.
I’m not sure what the speaker was offering, it could have been any number of useless subjects forced on the staff, but I did appreciate the light.
Over the years the topics had included how grading is unfair, how everyone is the same, how every student is a 3 on a scale of 1 to 4, along with presentations on how only heterosexuals could contract aids, the ever popular, gender-based theories and a dozen other bandwagon themes, all complete with the latest catchphrases.
One of the admins noticed us working on student papers rather than being motivated by the guy in the slick suit, with the perfect hair, who had never taught a single day, but knew everything there was to know about teaching high school kids. We took a break at about 10:30 am. When we returned, the light was out.
My friend, George, the head custodian, apologized to us at lunch for removing the light bulb. He’d been ordered to do it.
Since the room was now dark, aside from the light on “Mr. Wonderful,” I took a nap.
To my friends in the teaching business, welcome back. I can only hope your school year begins with time in your classroom.
I had a handful of administrators who remembered what it was like to be a teacher and minimized the insanity. Far too many others wallowed in the concept of pounding the staff with the latest panacea rolling through education, destroying teacher morale before the first student bounced into class in the process.
I’ve always wondered why they did this.
In the distant past, before Reagan’s “A Nation at Risk” study created the idiocy of 24/7 national testing we didn’t suffer through staff development at the beginning of the school year. You went to your classroom, with the shiny, newly waxed floors, and your orders from last spring stacked in boxes at the front of the room and began to prep. It was fabulous.
If you taught before 1983, you remember those days, and aside from a few diehards, you’ve been retired for a while.
The “New Improved – One Size Fits All” plans began in the fall of 1983. At first, they were innocuous, but they steadily gained momentum as state and federal officials began to micromanage classrooms. It’s never stopped.
There is no escape until the entire K-12 public school system collapses. That’s happened in many urban settings already. Ever wonder why there is a nationwide shortage of teachers, currently estimated at 1.1 million?
You’ll hear salary as the main problem. That’s true in many districts, but not in all. The problem of teacher shortage exists no matter the salary. It’s a question of support, respect, and protection from insane snowplow parents. These are all attributes you’ll find in a successful administrator with the backing of his or her local school board, but they’re rare, and getting rarer with each passing year.
A quote by a 19th-century Austrian-Hungarian philosopher Konstantin Jirecek is perhaps more appropriate than ever, “We, the unwilling, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, for so long, with so little, we are now qualified to do anything with nothing.”
Don’t think we were all helpless victims of an educational system run amok, we weren’t, though several of our expert speakers tried to convince us that we were all victims. Victimhood is a popular topic in schools.
Many of us took the disciplinary write-up by supervisors as a badge of honor. We became proud of not being “team players.”
As I informed one angry administrator when I was accused of not being a team player, “I’ve blocked for somebody else my entire life, I’ve passed the ball more than shot and been the ultimate team player. The problem is, I’m not on your team.”
I still have a copy of that write-up.
After a while, you get used to being passive-aggressive full-time, even after the inservice torture has ended and you’re back in the classroom.
At the beginning of a couple of dozen “staff development” sessions, I had one colleague who angered the speakers and embarrassed our “leadership” each time. You’d think they’d learn not to call on him, but they always did.
“Anyone have any questions or concerns before we get started?” the admin would ask.
This guy’s hand went straight up until he was called on.
“How does this give us more time or more money,” he always asked.
It wasn’t popular, but we all got a chuckle out of it.
At the end of each session, my friend Tim and I had another schtick.
As the session closed, I’d ask in a loud voice, “What was that about?”
Tim would respond, “It was about two hours.”
One well-meaning principal was always on us to ask the kids what they wanted to learn, rather than hammering them with math, English, science and history.
Finally, one of the quieter guys spoke up, “We all know what they want. How about we just roll the wrestling mats out in the gym, turn down the lights, and let them go at it.”
The meeting ended quickly.
All my stories, pale in comparison to what a few shop teachers at the James H. Moore Career Center pulled off a year before I arrived.
The entire Fremont 25 teaching staff sat in the commons area of the career center for a day-long training session. It was one of those awesome presentations where the presenter reads the text on the PowerPoint presentation to you. Scintillating.
These four guys sat in the back row, near the entrance to the lunch line. As the lights dimmed, they slid out of their seats and crawled a few dozen yards to the doors leading back to the shop area.
The vocational agriculture teacher had a camper trailer in the shop a student had left over the summer.
They entered the trailer, pulled down the curtains, and played cards.
There was a morning break and one of the administrators noticed they were missing. They saw him walk into the shop through a narrow gap in the curtains.
About five minutes before the lunch break, they crawled back to their seats. If you wonder if their seats were open, you’ve never been to a teacher’s meeting. Once a teacher chooses a seat, they’re in it for an hour, a day, or a week, they never switch.
The lights came on. They were in place and the administrator confronted them. “Where were you guys?” he asked.
“What do you mean,” they collectively answered.
The admin learned something important that day.
I hope the situation has improved for the staff. If not, enjoy your 32nd presentation of bloodborne pathogens, and try to remember if it’s 30 compressions and two breaths, or 15 for one, or maybe something different in your Red Cross Recertification, practice “it’s my why,” color code your standards, sequence, chronicle, practice “self-care” (on your own time) or do whatever the latest band-aid offers, or just smile and take a mental vacation. It’ll be over soon.
Grin and bear it, you’re there for the kids, not for the standards, threads, test scores, mission statements, or “ice breakers.” They’ll soon go away, and your attitude will improve after the sessions wear off.