Only a 99% waste of time. I've found them to be a 99.999...% waste of time.
Yet another reason why I refuse to go to worth PD outside of my building during school hours. Those sessions are full of "wetbehindtheears" and I end up listening to worthless crap. Admin usually doesn't argue with me because I tell them that it's a loss of instructional time. But I think they're pissed. I don't care.
Whoops-that should read "worthless".
This was brilliant! So, did you all 'golf-clap' at the end of your meeting to show school spirit or teamwork or something?
If I'm trying to last through my second year so I get tenure, I will do so by kissing buttocks and complimenting the smell.
It's a practical matter, really.
http://awaitingtenure.wordpress.com/
Do you remember the one guy in your college classes who waited to the very last second to raise his/her hand and ask a long, involved question just when you thought you were going to get out early?
There outta be a law!!!!!!!
Mr.Wetbehindtheears needs the following emergency measures taken: someone needs to slip a word search book into his mailbox, someone needs to give him today's word jumble (leave it in his mailbox) and give him an easy crossword, such as the Newsday or the Daily News. People like him make this mental anguish worse when they start pontificating or asking a stupid pointless question. I'd rather go to the dentist, I usually am doing something absolutely necessary there, unlike any given faculty meeting.
Beautiful insights at the end..."If the administrators running your meeting are still pondering the fine points of lateness after thirty years in the system, it's unlikely they have any worthwhile answers to offer..." So true.
Funny, I just posted about this. It seems that my solution to give kids detention (which, by the way, I hate, because I don't much want to spend time with them after school) when they are late has seemed to work for me. And I didn't have to attend a faculty meeting to arrive at said solution.
Try BS Bingo - A game to keep you from getting bored at meetings. Use sign language if winners don't want to scream out.
http://ednoteshumor.blogspot.com...at-
faculty.html
Hey now! Don't blame all the stupid questions on new teachers. I'm a first year teachers and I know well enough to keep my mouth shut at these meetings to try to get out of them quickly. I find just as often a veteran teacher will speak up with a question that prolongs the inanity or perhaps they'll use the forum to gripe so the meeting turns into an extended bitch session. It's amazing how people in the field of EDUCATION can waste so much time on stupid conversations.
Sorry, I didn't mean to stereotype new teachers. I work with another new teacher who's the best thing since sliced bread (actually much better than sliced bread, which is overrated) , and I do indeed know vets who come up with wasteful questions.
I was just writing about a single incident.
I also know that I've seen newbies who are made to do a staff development day presentation and have done great jobs considering the stress they must have been under. It's the naive or clueless we were referring to here, not all the new teachers. Sorry for the stereotyping.... and welcome to our world!
I was going to say something about that same quote: "If the administrators running your meeting are still pondering the fine points of lateness after thirty years in the system..."
Part of the shame of all these meetings and PD sessions is that these things are so frequently run by administrators who are AP Wetbehindtheears themselves. They think they're creating a new kind of wheel or something, but their stuff is mostly newly jargoned and re-packaged. If any of it is new, it's bound to be untested — just like ARIS, or schools report cards, or HR Connect, or any of those other installations the BoE spends tax money on in the name of improvements.
I think part of the training these new administrators get at the LeadershipShill Academy is to develop a kind of supercilious patina that shields them the utter disdain most of us have for these contractually-stipulated talkfest rituals.
I guess it's time I reposted this.
Which is exactly why, when they offered either a morning or after school meeting, I always chose the morning session. You couldn't ask extended questions because teachers had to get to class. (And we did, in fact, hear horror stories about afternoon meetings running to hours in length.) Unfortunately, they caught on to us, and now make them period-by-period meetings so we have to attend one during our off period, and they can keep us the full 90 minutes if they like.
Somehow I find it comforting to know that we are living in a parallel universe where the exact same thing happens here… but oftentimes, I find it's someone who has been here a while and feels the need to comment on everything… stuff like that drives me nuts… becauoh, how I feel your pain.
This year I am co-chair of my department, and have had the privilege of attending an additional meeting of department heads on Monday morning, for an hour, always ending after the 1st period bell has rung.
I had grown used to hearing the same information 3-4 times throughout the week: at the department head meeting, at my department meeting as it was relayed to the rest of my deparment, at a team meeting on Tuesday (because my team leader had been told the exact same things as the department heads), and finally at the other full or partial faculty meeting later in the week.
I realized something recently though: these aren't really "meetings". "Meeting" implies that there will be discussion, debate, and presentation of materials that must be handed out in person. In truth, there is none of these things. My principal talks for the entire hour, when almost everything she says could be written in an email or memo.
One thing that has lowered morale considerably is when somebody (or a small number of somebodies) screws up, and everyone gets yelled at as if the entire staff is guilty of the same offense. It's insulting and another waste of time.
We need better administrators, but we need better teachers first.
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