For the last two weeks, I've been attending professional development classes, working in my classroom, reading, organizing, despairing and praying in preparation for the school year. It's one of the strangest times every year. I'm well-rested, relaxed. I feel optimistic and hopeful and inspired, determined to attack some weak spots, holes in my repertoire. Then we go to these meetings--these meetings that I describe as soul-sucking meetings--and in about 12, maybe 15 hours, it's as if they try to kill any ingenuity, passion, or motivation that we might have cached away over the summer. I'm positive that this is not any one person's intention or motivation. But these meetings rarely fail and just to be frank, they are excruciating more often than not. Some years, I've had a horrible attitude. I've sat through these things grumbling expletives, fidgeting hot-faced and teetering on the cusp of mental breakdown, cardiac arrest. I tried calling-in well, saying, "I feel entirely too good to come to work today! Doh!" Other years, I've tried getting involved in order to control some of my own destiny--presenting little workshops for my colleagues. I've usurped other workshops, standing to proclaim in front of anyone who would listen that what we were doing was not a valuable use of our time--and that I intended to use my valuable time in a way that was productive. It only took once or twice to learn that these were both bad ideas.
I'm not here this morning to write an expose on professional development in public education. Maybe later. Probably never.
I'm just saying that this year I'm trying yet another mindset: it is what it is. And to use one of my colleague's lines, this is what we do. And so far, it's gotten me through cleaner than any other methodology to date. As a result, it seems as if all I have to do now is make it through 3 hours of "Nuts and Bolts" this morning and I'll be home free. I got this afternoon after lunch and tomorrow in my classroom to do everything I really need to do, and then the kids arrive Monday. I'll close my door and teach and everything will be fine.
Hey, I'm a teacher, man! It's what I do.
4 comments:
I can truly empathize. However, you can always have your own subversive agenda just behind your feigned look of attention. Some of the best lyrics ever were written when someone was supposed to be taking notes on whatever the administrators were talking about. The worse the lecture, the deeper you have to dig for gold.
Exactly, Jason. That's a technique I'm using with my new "is what it is" philosophy.
Great philosophy. I'm picking up on it myself.
I think I picked up this line while I was all over China and dealing with the annoyances of international travel. "It is what it is." It's very freeing to let go of the imaginary control I have over things. PD is miserable, but ... that's why I take my knitting. It become an opportunity rather than a dreaded requirement.
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