Category: Professional Development
Mailbag
I had high hopes for tonight’s post, but it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. I think I am still a little tattered from camping and rocking for four days in the desert. So let’s go to the mailbag. I have to commiserate a bit with a reader who emailed me after my latest faculty […]
Continue Reading...Cootie Catchers Would’ve Been More Fun
Back when I started in this district in ’93, the kids went 180 days a year. As our motto says: “Five shows a day, 180 days a year.” Teachers went 183. There was an extra day at the beginning of the year for meetings in the morning and, after free PTA-provided lunch, room prep and copy machine wars in […]
Continue Reading...Feed Me, or I’ll Stop Doing What Little Thinking I’m Doing About What You Have to Say
My long-suffering, long-time readers know how I feel about the necessity of having (good) snacks at ANY function where you expect the faculty to function. The way I see it, food at things like teacher trainings (didn’t they used to be called in-services?) and faculty meetings and management team meetings and basically any sort of […]
Continue Reading...Eight Things
I am lagging in so many areas lately, so don’t take it personally that this blog is one of them. Here’s the latest… 1. I had been thinking that this year’s crew was too nice and gentle and friendly to offer much comedy relief/material, but I was wrong. They are still seventh graders after all. […]
Continue Reading...I Guess We’ll See How This Goes
Our union worked for a while without a contract because we were locked in some very heated and lengthy negotiations with our district. Our district is one of just a handful left in California which they call “Basic Aid” or “Excessive Tax.” The short explanation is that our enrollment doesn’t matter; we don’t get ADA […]
Continue Reading...The Other Side of the Story
You know the scoring session from last time? Here’s what officially happened, according to the blog post from our Instructional Services Learning and Achievement department: On May 22, English teachers from across our district came together for our final common assessment scoring day. With the new Common Core emphasis on argumentation, we engaged in thoughtful […]
Continue Reading...Blogging the Scoring Session II
You thought I’d forgotten about continuing this one, huh? I tried to, but then there was another one of those district scoring sessions on Tuesday. Oh my. It’s taken me a few days to recover from this one, because of its epic-ness. Let’s just start from from the top with the latest one. The original […]
Continue Reading...Staff Development for the Passive Aggressive
(Warning: Lots of scare quotes ahead.) I hate being out of my classroom for “in-services,” “trainings,” “workshops,” or “classes,” especially the district mandated/sponsored ones. You know the kind, where they read powerpoint slides to you, you do “jigsaw” activities (gawd, I hate those), share with your 3 o’clock partner, and get a bunch of handouts […]
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