Tuesday, September 06, 2005
Motivation
Last Friday, while students were still not in attendance at Underwood High, the faculty was told to report instead to another high school along with the faculties of several surrounding schools, for their mandated professional development. Nevermind the fact that no teacher had cleaned up their classrooms. Nope...we had to go to this other school, sign in, grab a corn muffin, and then crowd into the auditorium for a motivational speaker.
This is what the principals of the seven schools involved decided. That discretionary funding would be best spent on a motivational speaker. Fine...I can accept that. It's no more ludicrous than anything else I've seen. I just wish I didn't have to waste two hours of my life pinned to a chair listening to a speaker tell me about how to be a better teacher. The idea was to inspire, to fill us with love for our jobs and for our students. But for some reason all I could think about was how I'd rather be doing something productive. Or how eerily reminiscent the lectures her "bad teacher" example gave sounded like my classroom last year. I left feeling overwhelmed and undermotivated...a frustrating combination.
The upshot of the basically wasted day was that I spent about 7 hours on Saturday cleaning up my classrooms. (Because I still have two!) Things look basically set. A few wires left to tape down, some posters to put up, but otherwise OK. Except that one class is slated to have 38 people. And I really only have 34 desks. Hopefully, those last 4 won't show up.
Another school year begins today. My grandmother says the start of the school year is like the flu. You just have to get over it. But I'm not really worried about the first day. Things generally go fine the first day. It's the other 180+ days that get me. And the bigger question of whether or not this is my career. Forever. And if not, what's next?
In the short term: getting dressed and going to school.
In the long term...who knows?
Ugh.
Last Friday, while students were still not in attendance at Underwood High, the faculty was told to report instead to another high school along with the faculties of several surrounding schools, for their mandated professional development. Nevermind the fact that no teacher had cleaned up their classrooms. Nope...we had to go to this other school, sign in, grab a corn muffin, and then crowd into the auditorium for a motivational speaker.
This is what the principals of the seven schools involved decided. That discretionary funding would be best spent on a motivational speaker. Fine...I can accept that. It's no more ludicrous than anything else I've seen. I just wish I didn't have to waste two hours of my life pinned to a chair listening to a speaker tell me about how to be a better teacher. The idea was to inspire, to fill us with love for our jobs and for our students. But for some reason all I could think about was how I'd rather be doing something productive. Or how eerily reminiscent the lectures her "bad teacher" example gave sounded like my classroom last year. I left feeling overwhelmed and undermotivated...a frustrating combination.
The upshot of the basically wasted day was that I spent about 7 hours on Saturday cleaning up my classrooms. (Because I still have two!) Things look basically set. A few wires left to tape down, some posters to put up, but otherwise OK. Except that one class is slated to have 38 people. And I really only have 34 desks. Hopefully, those last 4 won't show up.
Another school year begins today. My grandmother says the start of the school year is like the flu. You just have to get over it. But I'm not really worried about the first day. Things generally go fine the first day. It's the other 180+ days that get me. And the bigger question of whether or not this is my career. Forever. And if not, what's next?
In the short term: getting dressed and going to school.
In the long term...who knows?
Ugh.
