Tag: professional development

A couple of things

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment
  1. no-bullshitWent ahead and installed iOS 8 on the old phone despite the fact that the new phone shows up tomorrow.  No particular feelings about it at the moment; cosmetically it’s about the same.  I think I’m going to grow to like the predictive text feature and the HealthKit app scares the crap out of me.
  2. I am fully aware that every employed person in the world thinks that their job is either entirely bullshit or at least contains elements that are bullshit, but I swear to you that there is no bullshit more bullshitty and lame and insulting than education-related professional development.  It cost a thousand dollars plus just for the hotel rooms for my team to attend this required PD today and within fifteen minutes of the start of the thing they were asking grown people with Master’s degrees to stand up in front of a roomful of people and put napkins on their heads.  I have decided I am going to start to be actively rude when asked to participate in this sort of nonsense.  My salary costs taxpayers too much for these fuckers to waste my time.
  3. That said, the beds at the Hilton Garden Inn in Fishers, Indiana are outstanding.  I want one in my house.  And the sheets, and the comforter.  I have seriously never slept so well in a hotel bed.  I didn’t want to get up this morning at all.

Tomorrow will also be quiet, as I’m double-shifting and won’t have time to write, and right now I don’t have an early morning post scheduled.  However, big thing coming on Saturday to make up for it.

A dilemma

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching1 Comment

bad-teacherOn account of the fact that it’s 8:30 already and I literally just got home for the evening, this is going to be an abbreviated post.  Nonetheless, I pose you this:  I am on a probation assistance team for my school district (this is a new thing; I just joined) and have been assigned to help a teacher at another school.  This team, composed of me and three other people, is literally going to decide whether this person is allowed to remain in our district or whether ou(*) is going to be terminated at the end of the school year.  We’ll be doing observations and having meetings and conferences and one of my responsibilities as one of the peer mentors is going to be to do whatever I can to help em(*) get better.

As it works out, I already know the person on probation.  I’ve known this person for as long as I’ve been working in this town, in fact– and I’ve thought this person was basically incompetent and useless for most of that time.  I was not surprised to find out that xe’s(*) up for probation.

Here’s the thing, though:  my job is going to be to help this person get better.  I considered suggesting that I be moved to a team with a person that I don’t know (and, note, this isn’t exactly a close relationship– I’m pretty sure this person does not know my name; only the aggravation factor has fixed hirs(*) in my head) and rejected the idea after discussing it with the rest of my team; the simple fact is that the corporation isn’t that damn big and that we can’t really keep the groups “teachers who have similar jobs and work with the same population of kids” and “teachers who know each other” apart if we want to have any sort of functioning peer-assistance training going on.

I am pretty certain that I’m capable of helping someone I don’t like very much be better at their job; if we’re willing to consider “student” a job that basically describes half of my first and second hour class, so this isn’t something I can’t do.  What I have to work on is the prejudging factor:  I’ve said the words “I can’t believe Alex is a teacher” on more than one occasion (Alex is not zir(*) name, obviously) and I need to walk into these observations believing zhim(*) to be redeemable.   

We’ll see how it goes.

(*) Did a quick Google search for gender-neutral pronouns and my brain broke.  Started choosing them at random when I needed them.