Training Day, or "How I Learned to Escape to My Happy Place" (originally posted 6/26/2008)

It has begun. Today I went to a professional development seminar intended to familiarize us with the Reading and Language Arts programs that we will be implementing during the five weeks of the summer program. Those of you reading who are teachers know what I am talking about when I say just how painful one of these things can be. For those of you who aren't teachers, imagine yourselves sitting in a large room full of other teachers where the comfort level is just barely above excruciating. The speaker, usually a representative of whatever publisher manufactured the latest revolutionary educational program that your school system decided to shell out the big bucks for, invariably decided to deliver the seminar as if to a class of second-graders, rather than to a room full of adults (presumably to model "correct" teaching for us incompetents). Often the speaker is barely audible or inarticulate. Generally, the audience is asked to participate in numerous and tedious activities that make what should be a thirty minute presentation three hours long.

Three.

Hours.

Long.

Today's training took that scenario to a staggering level. It took place in the auditorium of a high school gym. The sales representative (that's right, a sales representative) who went through the components of our reading program spoke in such a way that we only heard every second word—moving several rows closer made no difference. Everything that we could make out suggested that a better training would consist of us sitting in our own classrooms and reading the materials ourselves. It was at some point halfway through (or at least it could have been halfway through; it's impossible to tell) that a group of teachers from one particular school realized that they had an earlier version of the program that didn't include some of the features that the speaker was talking about. This caused considerable confusion among both the audience and the speaker, who obviously had not prepared for this. I wish I could say how they solved the problem, because some of my colleagues and I just got distracted and chatted about how we would be using this program in our school, with our very limited three-hour time slot.

That wasn't the end, however. After sitting around in idleness for a while, a second speaker talked about two other, completely different, parts of the Language Arts program. She was a resource teacher, and, as such, a far better speaker. We could actually hear her. Unfortunately, the size and scope of the program left us far more confused as to what we were actually supposed to be teaching when school starts on Monday. It goes something like this: we were shown a comprehensive program that explicitly states a three-hour time slot. Well, in our school we are doing both Math and Language Arts, so that gives us—after getting kids settled and feeding them, among other time-consuming issues—maybe an hour to fit in that three-hour program. How this is going to happen, I don't know. We left there with more questions than answers, which I guess we'll have to get addressed tomorrow.

I'm getting the feeling that this is a very confused entry with no real flow. That is because my brain is still reeling from sitting in that gym all morning after three hours of sleep and listening to utter nonsense. Also, I am drinking some Gatorade that tastes vaguely of nail polish remover. I apologize if I sound scatterbrained.

I will put an end to this entry with a simple request: if anyone knows any head-clearing or stress-relieving techniques that I can try between now and Monday, please let me know via comments. Thanks!