What Better Way To Teach Teachers Than Forcing Them To Repeat Things As If They Are Children?
Are you one of those people who think teachers are overpaid union thugs that are just lazy and work like 2 months out of the year? If so haha you are on the wrong blog and get thee to a Pajamas Media or a National Review Online ASAP. If you're down with teachers, hang out with us and watch this terrible video that shows what teachers have to endure under the guise of "professional development."
Are you freaked out by that video, even if you do not know what professional development is? Yes you are, because you are watching a bunch of adults crammed into a children's classroom, squished into those little kid desks, being forced to recite everything the instructor says.
Professional development is one of the scourges of your life if you are a teacher. You're dragged out of doing your actual job to go learn how to do your job, sometimes from a neato for-profit organization that is making like five times your salary to tell you about your job. And then sometimes, apparently, you have the joy of being treated like small children while learning about the Continuous Improvement Performance Matrix Rubric Worksheet or whatever the hell they are calling this week's nonsense assessment device.
Listen. There are times in your life when it is appropriate to be made to recite each word of something that is being spoon-fed to you by another adult. Getting married and repeating after your judge/priest/wiccan lord/friend that got ordained on the internet. Taking an oath of citizenship! Getting sworn in to office is also another excellent time you should repeat slavishly what someone tells you, unless that someone is Chief Justice John Roberts and he is fucking up your oath of office left and right.
But it is pretty much never appropriate that you be treated like you are 5 years old and be told to recite (RECITE!) each word (EACH WORD!) of a thing (OF A THING!) you are supposed to be learning about (SERIOUSLY NOT GOING TO DO THIS ANYMORE FUCK YOU) because that is not how grown people need to learn things and it is humiliating and infantilizing and a huge waste of time and money so Jesus, knock it off.
[ WaPo ]
We have those team building exercises regularly in the corporate world. Fortunately, as a technician putting on the event rather than an attendee, I get to sit backstage and laugh my ass off at the idiocy. Here's a bag of marshmallows, a couple drinking straws, a box of Christmas light bulbs, a Sharpie and the 12v battery out of a 72 Chevy- have your team build something that represents the core mission statement of your department.
True story- with the exception of the car battery I have seen all of those things make their way into a ballroom for a breakout session