Welcome back, teachers, to another productive year. As you know, we here at the West Hell School District like to pack these pre-student days with lots of professional development because, here in the administrative offices, we believe deeply in looking like we're getting something done, and for these few days, the only people we can do things to are the professional staff. Here are some of the selections for the upcoming PD sessions.
Welcome Icebreakers
Some of you may think it's silly to play games to help you get acquainted with people you have worked with for years, but the real purpose here is to get you reacquainted with the feeling of being treated like a child instead of a grown-ass adult.
New Procedures Overview
We have taken those internal procedures that you barely got used to last year and changed them again. You'll need to throw out the forms piled up in your desk and/or uninstall the software on your computer to make room for the new procedural materials. This is sure to be a labor-and-time saving new procedure, by which we mean it will save us time and labor in the office by shifting the time and labor to you. Let all that excitement about teaching students suffocate under the load of soul-crushing administrative minutia.
New Software Platform Introduction
We have adopted a new software platform for use in the district because the software we promised you we would use forever just finished its free trial period over the summer. We have not tested this new software yet, so if you run into any problems, just forward a note to the office and we'll pass that along to the company and I'm sure we'll hear back from them some time. Please do not question the usefulness of ethical concerns that come with our tech overlords; in particular, don't try to ask about the ethical or educational issues involved in the AI we're forcing into your classroom. We have heard that it is inevitable and must be accepted. Besides, it's totally free.
Terrifying Legal Stuff
A lawyer will be in to tell you some terrifying stories of teachers who did seemingly ordinary things and ended up facing billions of dollars in fines and decades in a gulag somewhere. Just try not to touch students, hand students anything, or make direct eye contact with them and you'll probably be okay.
New Stupid Social Media Tricks
A law enforcement officer will be in to scare you with tales of the newest social media trends and how to spot trouble with them in your classroom. This would be scarier except that all of these trends ended weeks ago to be replaced with new ones.
Textbook Program Training
A publisher's rep will be in to tell you how to do your job, based on the two years they spent in the classroom before giving up because they couldn't take it any more and wanted to do something cushier like pimping for a publisher. The rep will refuse to answer any questions about how to adapt the program to your classroom, and will instead offer useful advice about how she would use it if she were a teacher, and how you can use a simple 90 minutes from your thirty minute planning period to prepare materials.
Data Session
Teachers will hunch over computer screens and try to find something useful buried in the piles of test scores from the state. There will be charts and graphs, and lots of forms to fill in with numbers and stuff, but no answers to questions like "Exactly what was this question on the test that most students got wrong?" If we just keep finding new ways to process the weighing of the pig, we are sure it will get bigger.
Some Damned Useless Thing
We needed to block out the data time for everyone who teaches reading or math, so here's some placeholder for everyone else, because we didn't have time to find something useful for you.
Discipline
Administration wants teachers to know that they have been heard on the issues of student discipline and teacher morale, and they plan to do implement an assortment of new acronyms and programs this year that continue to put all the responsibility on the classroom teacher. Administration wants you to know that you have their full support, as in they fully support the idea of you handling this stuff yourself and not asking them to do something useful.
Morale
Administration has heard that some of you are unhappy, and administration would like you to just shut up about it. Also, because one teacher made a procedural error last year, the full staff will now be berated like disobedient children. Thanks a lot, Brenda.
At Least One Hour of Cognitive Dissonance
No day of PD is complete without a self-contradictory. A session about how you shouldn't just use direct instruction, delivered entirely through direct instruction. A session about questioning strategies that uses none of those strategies. "Don't just read off the Power Point slide," reads the presenter off the Power Point slide.
Cavalcade of Cliches
Do you remember your why? Have you got your grit and rigor packed? Can you focus on all this inspirational language, or are you just wishing you could get some work done in your classroom? Sometimes these really do stir the soul a bit, until some admin pops up at the end to scold everyone about copier use and getting your lunch lists in on time.
Classroom Prep Time
Teachers are invited to finish preparing their rooms for the students any time after 3:30.
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