For parents, the school year begins with a trip to the mall for clothes and school supplies, for teachers it begins with a round of in-services. Sometimes they are very, very good, but when they are bad they are horrid.
I suffered through one today and I now have the perfect recipe for "a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad in-service".
Neglect to inform point people at the site what will be required in terms of equipment and logistics.
Stuff 100+ people into a small room. Do not add the presenters who are running late.
Require the 100+ people stand in a long line to sign in because you haven't enough sign in sheets.
Waste 50 minutes while the presenters try and figure which groups need to move to another room because there aren't enough chairs or tables.
Sort out the groups and discover you haven't enough handouts, journals and other essential supplies. Some people will have to do without. Which makes it impossible for them to participate.
Finally begin presentation. Pretend your audience is 7 years old, the same age as their students.
Assume your audience knows nothing about the topic. Do not change your assumption, even when it becomes very apparent that this is an incorrect assumption.
End the presentation early but inform the audience they must stay for another 45 minutes because it's supposed to be 4 hours long.
At that point all the teachers in the room got up to go to the bathroom and forget to return.
It was a total waste of a morning.
4 comments:
I think I'll go to Australia.
Alexander is one of my favs...and I liked the reference to it!
Hope the school year starts off well for you!
Sounds like a library "staff day", though luckily these days we have one only once every few years.
As Alexander pointed out "some days are like that--even in Australia!"
Hang in there!
Oh dear! I'm so sorry!
Sounds like a typical in-service to me.
Hey, library lady has my icon!
Such good taste!
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