“I’m sorry. The brain you are trying to reach has been
temporarily disconnected. Please try again later, after its owner has consumed
vast quantities of peanut butter and chocolate.”
This is how I feel after a school day filled, not with real
teaching, but with IEP meetings, staff meetings, grade level PLC meetings,
and/or most district-level in-service training meetings. Numb. Zoned out.
Mentally disconnected. Certainly not rejuvenated, empowered, or engaged, ready
to go back to my classroom with renewed enthusiasm and energy.
It wasn’t always this way. When I first entered the teaching
profession, almost 16 years ago now, I LOVED any kind of training meeting. I
always came back from them with new things I’d learned and that I could use
immediately in my classroom. It was exciting to share a classroom with other
teachers from all over the district, share our successes and our failures, make
new friends, and continue to share with one another years after the training
day.
It started every September with the new training day classes
booklet. Inside were lists of classes for each range of grade levels, where the
classes would be held (never in the district office, BTW, almost always in the
classroom of the teacher conducting the training), the times/dates for the
training classes, and the number of teachers allowed in each session.
We were allowed to sign up for a total of five classes each
year (although we wanted more), and we could wait as long as the week before a
training class in order to sign up, if we wanted. However, we knew better than
to wait. The best classes filled up fast, so we signed up as fast as we could.
We’d meet with our teacher friends during lunch in the staff room (yes, we
actually sat down and ate lunch daily) to discuss the classes we wanted to
take, and we’d all call in our choices by the end of the week.
On training day, we’d carpool from our school, then sit
together in the training class, not to waste time with idle chatter, but to
talk about how we would use the strategies or supplies in our own classroom
when we returned. If there wasn’t enough room in our class for everyone we knew
who wanted to attend, we’d take notes, or make extra copies, to share with
other teachers back “home.” We didn’t compare test scores, or try to pinpoint
who was the best teacher. We just shared, and helped each other.
Principals did not show up at these trainings to check on
us. There was a sign-in sheet, and we were trusted to take a reasonable lunch,
as well as breaks when we needed them. There were bowls of chocolate on the
tables, and we shared handfuls with each other, grinning about the mood-lifting
properties of chocolate which were extolled by researchers. We were sharing not
just the chocolate, but also a love of teaching and learning, a love of sharing
our enthusiasm with each other, a love of the difference we were making in the
lives of our children.
We didn’t need to be policed because we WANTED to be there.
We talked. We laughed. We LEARNED: from the classroom teacher, from the trainers, and from each other. When
we returned to school we were enthusiastic about what we learned, eager to
share new lessons and new materials with our students. Years later, we still shared
new learning materials we had stumbled upon, or which had been shared with us
by a colleague. We sent them by district “pony mail” to other schools where
other training day friends worked, because that’s what they were to us:
Friends. Colleagues. Teachers. Never competitors.
Unfortunately, this is not the way we are trained today. I
can’t remember the last training day where we were allowed to choose what
interested us, where we learned from Master Teachers, shared ideas with other
teachers, or came home excited to share what we learned with our students.
Today’s trainings usually involve district bureaucrats, corporate trainers, and
principals acting as police officers to ensure our compliance.
When asking
fellow teachers what they thought of the training there is usually much eye
rolling, groaning, and exasperation. Today there is definitely no sharing, no
enthusiasm, and definitely no eagerness to apply what has been learned.
Today I ask, “Where’s the chocolate?”
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