It is the bane (or blessing, if you choose) of any teacher's existence: having to sit through hours of staff development. Usually occurring at the beginning of the year, prior to students returning from holidays, or on the odd Monday holiday - students off, staff in session, teachers sit for hours to be what; taught new methods? inspired to change everything they do? be told we're valuable no matter what the world thinks? If you assume that I've met my quota of staff development hours every year I've taught, then at the end of this year, I've sat through 575 hours of these lovely meetings. How am I not perfect yet? Besides the fact that nobody is perfect, the other answer is that over a span of thirty years, the exact same ideas are being implemented, but they are packaged with different wording. If I say the words from twenty years ago to praise or remind, I'm not doing it right anymore. Same ideas, different words. I recently sat through a day of listening to a speaker that was guaranteed (by our administration) to be wonderful!!! You will learn so much! Be excited! Let me bring out my inner Yoda as I say - "Exciting to me, meetings are not." I decided to bring a pen and let my thoughts flow onto paper to keep myself looking engaged. Here's a little view of where my brain went from 8:30 a..m. to 11:30 a.m., with one twenty minute break:
Go ahead, inspire me. Try to tell me something that I haven't heard. The first try - telling me I'm older, smarter and I have skills. As I've said many times before, 'There's your "duh" for the day.' Keep trying. Next, you tell me to put my phone out of sight (not a bad thing) because every time it goes off, some chemicals are released in my brain. Yeah, chemicals are released for me every time I smell the pizza from the cafeteria next door, too. That's life. So, you got our phones put away. Now you go over the handout. Thank you so much for telling me what is contained in the papers that I'm holding in my hand Oh good, a new power point slide! Please read it out loud to me because I'm a teacher and reading is hard. Also, I do not agree with the quote. From famed teacher and child psychologist Haim Ginott, it reads:
“I’ve come to a frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element in the classroom. It’s my personal approach that creates the climate. It’s my daily mood that makes the weather. As a teacher, I possess a tremendous power to make a child’s life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration. I can humiliate or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis will be escalated or de-escalated and a child humanized or dehumanized.”
― Haim G. Ginott
I do agree with most of that, but not the crisis escalating part. I have personally seen situations escalate even when I'm at my personal best. Dr. Ginott's observations are from the 1950s through the 1970s. We need to keep the valuable and do away with what has changed with time.
Oooh! Time to take notes! No, not really, just time to read the note-taking paper to me. Once again, I guess I can't read. More of the comedy routine (this is a fairly entertaining speaker, as they go...)about how tired teachers get, and how they go to happy hour together.
Finally! We take notes about how our classroom looks. And then about behaviors - we are supposed to tell them (the children) in all our gestures and behaviors that we want them here, we believe they can learn and we'll keep them as safe as possible. (Good points, I've heard and used them for 23 years.) Comedy moments were demonstrated concerning how our behavior is communication. (Example - a teacher yelling "What have I told you about yelling?" haha)
Next we're asked "Do you get mad?" Discussion (one sided) of what we do when we're mad. All leading up to the point that we do not choose to sit in time out when we're mad. So here we are, being told that we are doing it all wrong. Don't say "don't hit". Tell a kid that flips everyone off to do it in their pocket. I don't know if I think that's ridiculous or I'm jealous because I didn't think of it.
We are told to ask ourselves: "Can I be a perfect role model 100% of the time?" We are told to remove "appropriate" and "inappropriate" from our disciplinary vocabulary. Easier said than done. A little contradiction is going on here. we can set a "parameter" and validate that a child has the urge to [hit, fight, curse, cheat....] and re-iterate the parameter for school. But when you set parameters at school, isn't that because the action is not appropriate? Does simply changing "inappropriate" to "not ok" change the brain chemical?
So much of what this presenter is saying is the same thing I've been taught - on the job - for years. And I personally use a lot of these techniques - maybe even in a very excellent, exemplary way. Many teachers at my school do all these things well.
For the past 2.5 hours, this is what's been said. It boils down to frame of mind. She is saying "I did not say there are no consequences". But she only gave examples of non-working consequences. She didn't give concrete, usable examples of what to do once it's a necessity. Consequences are seriously downplayed in the district, though, so that's probably a grand scheme.
Lunch is in six minutes and all I can think about is the pain in the bones of my rear end, as I've been sitting on a 12-inch diameter plastic disc for four hours. And while I sit here contemplating whether this pain in my rear (literal, this time...) affects my bursitis, the speaker is making some of her most hard-hitting, serious, dynamic points and I'm not hearing a word. Money well-spent, district?
Thus ends my free-write from my day of learning. The afternoon session was another three hours of the same thing. My hand wouldn't write anymore. But you know what? The next day, students walked into my room. I let them know that I was happy they were there, that I believed they could learn and that they were in a safe place. I didn't do that because of the speaker. I did that because I love kids, I love teaching my subject to kids and I naturally adjust to the atmosphere and the basic needs of those kids to get them to learn and love music.
No comments:
Post a Comment