K-12 Professional Development Session
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Hope Springs Eternal
"This one’s going to be different!"
Traits
- Donuts, coffee supplied by administration; teachers wearing shorts, blue jeans, chatting
- Session opens with entertainment from high school choir, teachers lean back, close eyes, enjoy early morning nappy-time
- Speaker gives self-effacing introduction; cracks jokes (some actually kind of funny)
- More jokes, several anecdotes; some sincere laughs, occasional honest clapping
- Elementary teachers smiling, nodding at each other
- Guidance counselors whispering to each other, hoping certain teachers are "getting the message"
- Even high school teachers fairly attentive, minimal paper grading, magazine reading
- Cynical comments restricted to "the cynics" (you know who they are); one cynic writes down predictions when vice-principal will make first exit to "check out" something
- Oohs and aahs from techno-illiterate teachers entertained with dissolves and wipes of PowerPoint presentation
- Teacher famed for sleeping during in-services still awake, quietly doing statistics
- Chairs feeling comfy; several teachers experiment with different slouch positions
- Speaker introduces main concepts, a few new easy-to-understand terms
Stage 2:
Bring on the AV
"It’s deja vu, all over again"
Traits
- First transparency rears its ugly head
- Audience begins to realize this is just common sense or worse...common folly
- Jokes starting to sound suspiciously familiar, forced
- Speaker’s idiosyncratic speaking style surfaces, encourages mimicry among less mature staffers
- Urban legends creeping into speech, being used as "anecdotal evidence"
- Elementary teachers looking around worried, annoyed at coaches
- First "Far Side" cartoon appears on overhead...it’s the same one last speaker used
- Resident sleeper out cold, others beginning to nod off
- Chairs starting to feel cramped, one bold teacher flings legs over seat in front of him
- Terms becoming technical, vague, psycho-babble
- Speaker begins speeding up PowerPoint screen changes, neglects to even read some of them
- Guidance counselors taking names of teachers who aren’t paying attention
- Vice-principal makes first exit, right on schedule; principal soon follows with brow professionally wrinkled in "Something's come up" mode
- Resident cynic begins drafting a Four Stages of In-Service Session
Stage 3:
Mumbo-Jumbo Land
"We get an hour and a half for lunch, right?"
Traits
- Terminology explosion, abundance of hyphenated words and phrases involving the word "cognitive"
- People communicate with others across the aisle concerning lunch plans by making gestures related to local eating establishments: fishing gestures for the seafood joint, two hands around an imaginary burger for the burger joint, and a chopstick manuvre for the local Chinese restaurants
- Auditorium alive with watch-checking gestures, some members average more than one watch-check per minute; one teacher simply stares at watch
- Cynics entertain each other with comic nonverbal gestures such as eye-rolls, caricature mimicry of speaker, and frozen look of comatose state
- Speaker drones on, beads of sweat appearing on forehead
- Resident sleeping teacher lifeless, feared dead
- Overhead projector use now dominates, audience stirs to attention when a fly is seen walking lethargically across transparencies; bets are taken whether it will make it to the other side or not
- English teacher completes grading research papers; basketball coach puts finishing touches on summer weight-lifting schedule
- Teachers begin exhibiting the same behavior they despise in students: note-passing, talking out loud, reading Mad Magazine; principal -- back from trouble spot -- gives dirty looks
- Lunch break! Spirits soar.
Stage 4:
Death: aka Jonestown Revisted
"Pass me the Kool-aid, please."
Traits
- Teachers hunker down for post-lunch session
- Speaker repeating stories wholesale, jokes degrading to Reader’s Digest anecdotes
- Actual snoring heard in large quadrant of auditorium; even superintendent fully asleep, eyes moving in dog-like REM state
- Cynicism reaches critical mass — resident cynic has lost his market niche as scores of teachers begin plying their wares
- Speaker demonstrates professional "stretching" skills, spending thirty minutes on one overhead transparency which, to his ignorance, is upsidedown
- Some members of audience begin unintentional TM…staring at wall, chanting "HOME...HOME;" a few actually enter altered states of consciousness; some discover true meaning of life
- Resident-Sleeper’s hibernation ends; he awakes with a start, gathers himself, asks a couple of already-covered questions which the speaker, full of joy, answers at length
- Speaker raises hopes with mention of possible early release, a cough from area where administrators are seated dashes them immediately
- 3:25: Five minutes to go; teachers begin waking up, lots of shuffling of papers; evaluation forms passed out
- 3:30: Nirvana! Teachers so elated they actually write positive comments on evaluation form; "It’s like finally getting out of the car after a l-o-n-g trip," one teacher exclaims
- Administrators awake, vice-principal reenters auditorium, all clap enthusiastically, and comment to each other what a success the day has been
- Dismissal! Teachers race for parking lot; several injured in pile-up at exit gate.
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