Thursday, August 17, 2006

Back To Work Today

Officially we don't have to go back until tomorrow, but we have to accomplish 18 hrs per school year of staff development outside of school hours, so we knocked out 6 such hours today.

Review of teacher credentialing stuff.

Of course, there's always something you can get out of any presentation. There were a couple small effective teaching techniques--and my students know I'm all about effective teaching techniques!--that the presenter talked about that I could easily adapt for my own classroom.

But honestly, were the few positives I got out of the presentation worth the hours it took for me to get them? It seems an awfully inefficient way to spend time that could have been spent making sure my classroom and presentation are ready for the dumplings to show up on Monday.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"It seems an awfully inefficient way to spend time"

Sounds like school in general.

Darren said...

I thought I got the address correct but it came back to me undeliverable. My email is in my profile; it's my Yahoo nickname at Yahoo dot com.

Ellen K said...

We've been back for a week, two if you count the lovely in-service week. We've had some great presentations in the distant past, but I am not sure if it's lack of money or will, our department has had some pretty sad in-services the past couple of years. This year we got to see a presentation from the textbook sales rep on the software. She didn't have a laptop or a media projector. And the ones provided by our district didn't cooperate. So basically we spent 90 minutes watching the rep and the tech person wangle the software through a set-up program. The next inservice amounted to a discussion of the district art show, which escalated into a battle of egos between one teacher that fancies himself the Art God and the rest of us peons who had the gall to questions his infallibility. I ducked the major arguements but somehow managed to end up doing publicity anyway. *sigh* It's always something. Good luck. We will be starting later next year. Gosh, with the talk of rolling blackouts here due to the drought you'd think someone would've made a decision NOT to open school so early in the hottest part of the summer. And out schools are all air-conditioned with windows that don't open. That means when the air goes, so do we. Plus, I pity those poor kids on the football teams, drill teams and in the marching bands. It was 106 here today. It will be 104 tomorrow. We haven't had rain since July 4th. So when you look at it that way, it's better to be at school than lounging around the house....I guess.