Thursday, October 15, 2009
Boring/pointless meetings
ON Wednesday of every week we have a one hour meeting. Some weeks its an hour and a half. My district is taking on what they are calling a global perspective, knowing and engaging students and information technology. I have interpreted this as the kids should be more worldly... the teachers are out of touch with technology... and teachers don't know the kids well enough. I am forced to sit through grand ideas of how the student body should be more involved on a global scale. In the end I am sitting through painfully boring meetings that do not have anything to do with my class. The thing that really pains me is that the district does not provide a clear idea of what they expect us to produce. Its like the super dumb leading the teachers. Seeing a superintendent ad-lib and just wing it is painful. Does anyone have any tricks for staying awake during very boring meetings? The one thing they don't tell you in college is that you will be forced to sit through this garbage.
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Unfortunately for us, we have to do these things. I cannot tell you how unhappy I am to go into the professional learning classes my school has set up. Want to know what they are about? How about Standards-Based Classrooms. Something tech ed has been dong for years and something I have been doing since day 1. Not only this, but I also took a CTAE standards class from the county recently and I am in the Standards Based Classroom course here at VCSU. Think I may have too much? And then they do not care to include connections classes in the discussions. It is more for math and literacy than anything and it sickens me because adults do not know how to do this already. All I can say is stick it out, but realize we all must do this, it is a part of our jobs.
ReplyDeleteGreg,
ReplyDeleteI understand your pain. Every two weeks I sit through meetings that do not apply to me, because I teach a connections course. Technology education dictates that I differentiate in the classroom and that I use technology to teach. Unfortunately my principal does not see it that way and therefore I must sit at a meeting. Lately I have been taking my laptop to work on graduate school to get me through these meetings. My thought is I know what you are talking about so as long as I am present and participate when asked I can do something else in the mean time. Just me thankfully the person running your meeting doesn’t make you play games during the meeting. We get to practice teaching techniques and other ideas in our meetings. I wish I had better advice, but all I can say is smile because none of us are getting out of it any time soon.
Many of our PD's are the same. They only pertain to certain people and NEVER for speical educaiton. I have found ways to use my time productive. I will often bring cross-word puzzles, word seachers etc. I have also brought my school lap-top and prepared my lessons for the upcoming week, looked for activities on the internet, and done some of my on-line class work. I watched some of our cordinators cross stitch and work on their computer also.
ReplyDeleteAfter our last PD, a few of my special ed. teachers and I talked about what a waste of time it was for us and we wished that they would have a separate PD for us. Not everyone needs to know the same thing.