#teacher workshop

Well. It's my twentieth year of teaching. And I started it majestically... by tripping over my own two feet on my way to my classroom because my sneakers and the freshly waxed hallways didn't get along.

(I tripped like three more times throughout the day, twice in front of other people).

Buuuuut anyways.

In-service started with coffee, and The Principal's welcome back/welcome new people remarks. After that, we had four gloriously uninterrupted hours to set up our classrooms, but, if you've been following along at home, you know I did a lot of my set up when I was in for LT meetings last week- and I'm notoriously quick at doing many things anyhow- so I went and checked in with the teachers in my department. Then I started tackling the mess that is the English/Social Studies staff room. I didn't get very far on that, but progress is progress.

Lunch was pizza from one of the local restaurants. I introduced Ms. B and Mr. X to my Cacophonous friends, and they fit right in, which was awesome. A cacophony ought to expand and grow, after all!

After lunch, The Principal went over policies and procedures, new or continuing initiatives, and expectations for tomorrow's freshman orientation. He'd given himself an hour and a half, probably anticipating more questions than there were (I'd anticipated more), but only took maybe forty minutes. So everyone was free to wrap up the day however they needed to. I went over how to use PowerSchool and Smartpass with Ms. B and Mr. X, then went back to my classroom to fill out all the beginning-of-the-year paperwork I had to fill out.

I did text Mrs. T, too, to tell her it was weird to do this without her, but we're both in good places and doing what we want to do, so it's all good.

Professional Development for educators! https://www.eventbrite.com/e/investigating-a-light-station-teacher-training-workshop-2017-tickets-31507981220

All of our incoming ninth graders were in the building this morning for Freshmen Orientation, which was largely run by our student ambassadors (a group of about 40 juniors and seniors who were nominated by the staff to represent the school community). They got their schedules, toured the building, met teachers and other staff members, played some games, and had lunch together.

I liked it because I got to briefly meet my new Global Studies students, and do an initial "vibe check," as they might say. And I liked that many of the ambassadors who are also going to be taking APGOV went out of their way to find me and tell me how excited they were. That's awesome.

Also, free lunch is always nice.

After lunch, we had department meetings. At mine, we discussed the implementation of new policies, professional expectations, upcoming events, etc... And I told everyone to let me know if there's something they need; there was nothing immediate. Mr. X hung out for a bit to do some planning for Global Studies afterwards, which was good because I needed to bounce ideas for some more geography-focused lessons.

Today was the last day of teacher workshops.

The ladies who run our main office kicked off the morning with a presentation about the various things they handle (like sub requests, visitor passes, field trip forms, etc...) and how we can help them help us. Then The Police Chief and the new SRO came in to go over ALICE training, which sucked because, well, discussing what to do in the event that someone tries to kill you is always going to suck. But it was as good as it could be. Their presentation was concise, it wasn't overly dramatic or graphic, and the one sergeant who does not appreciate me or my smart mouth wasn't there (heh).

And, after that, the department heads got to bring the mood back up by celebrating the successes of our previous year, talking about our aspirations for the coming year, and getting everybody feeling positive about the direction we're going as a school. Our little hype session was followed by a potluck lunch- which is a teacher workshop tradition here- and then we all spent the afternoon wrapping up our preparations for the start of the year.

I did my boards, made my photocopies, set up Google Classroom, met one last time with Ms. B and Mr. X to make sure they're squared away, and that was that.

We've got a four-day weekend now, and our students arrive on Tuesday.

Today was the last day of the school year. Since we can count the two evenings of parent-teacher conferences as a “day,” we still end with up with 187 days, but not really, but it still counts. 

Anyways. 

I’d already done my grading and cleaned my classroom, so I thought I wouldn’t have much to do this morning, but then The Principal came to give me my first official task as social studies department head: filling out the paperwork to get money for teachers to do curriculum work over the summer. Long story short, US History and Civics- traditionally junior and senior classes- are being combined into one yearlong sophomore class called American Studies, so there’s some work that needs doing, and folks ought to be paid for it. So I spoke to the teachers who’ll be taking that on, did the paperwork, submitted it, and ended up having a long conversation with Mr. I about that work, about vertical alignment between freshman and sophomore year, about me being a department head, and some other stuff. 

And THEN I had nothing more to do, so I asked the office assistants if I could put new paper and borders on the bulletin boards used for school news, sports and club announcements, etc... Mrs. R ended up helping me, and now all those boards look nice and fresh for the fall. So we filled the time, we made our hall look nice, it’s good stuff. 

After lunch with basically all of The Cacophony, we all went back to wrap-up little things, then headed to the auditorium for our final faculty meeting (which was basically just The Principal saying thank you to everyone who’s retiring or moving onto other things, plus a few housekeeping items). After that, it was out into the sunshine! 

AND WE’RE BACK! I mean, The Principal’s stuck in Covid quarantine for one more day (oops), but details, details! The rest of us are back, and we’re ready to put the past three years behind us and kick some ass. Pretty much every meeting we had acknowledged the fact that we tried to do our best throughout the pandemic, but it was tough, it was traumatic, and we were all in survival mode, so we all experienced what Mr. G called “professional slippage.” Some things fell apart. Now it’s time to put them back together, rebuild our school culture, help everyone reach their full potential. 

The Superintendent welcomed back the faculty and staff of the entire district, which he was delighted to do because, obviously, we didn’t gather everyone in the auditorium like that last year or the year before. He always does this thing where he asks everyone to stand, and to sit back down when he calls out our years of experience in the district (as this is my 18th year, I was standing for quite a while- and quite a bit longer than many of my same-age colleagues, who worked elsewhere before coming here). It’s cheesy, but it’s also really cool, especially when he gets to the last few people remaining and asks why they’ve stayed. So, yeah, he did that, and then set the tone for the year: vision, goals, all that. 

After that, the middle and elementary school folks left, and we had a high school-specific meeting. Our admin team has been restructured so that there’s not a vice principal anymore, but two Deans of Students (9th/10th and 11th/12th), one of whom is brand new to the district (and fresh off a decade in South Korea, so he’s very amused that my brain is full of kpop). Our schedule has also been revised to build in a more formal advisory program, so that was discussed, and we got instructions for completing state-mandated suicide prevention training online. We were sent off to do that, work in our classrooms, etc, etc... 

If you’re a longtime reader, and you’re wondering if I was playing Bingo at those meetings: yes, I was, and, yes, I got Bingo. Ms. H and Mr. F both got it before me, though, so they win. Note: I got six or seven people to play, and more to look on, because I’m a terrible influence and also an excellent one. Heh. 

What else? It was good to see my cacophonous friends again, and to get excited about the year with them. And we are all excited because there’s a real determination to move forward in a positive way, lift morale, foster school pride, all the stuff that’s been so hard to do lately. And we all believe we can do it.

Well. I don’t think I pissed off The Police Chief, but I definitely pissed off some other people. 

If you haven’t been following along at home, today’s a teacher workshop day, and we had to spend it doing ALICE training, which I very much did not want to do. I don’t think traditional lockdowns are good, and I have no problem learning about other options through videos, discussions, etc... I objected to the practical drills- having the PD guys shoot nerf guns at us in mock shooter scenarios- and I object even more stringently to the possibility of doing them with students because there’s no evidence they’re effective and lots of evidence they’re traumatic. I also object to the obscene amount of money going to these “school safety” companies instead of being used to keep school lunches free, or hire more SAPs and counselors, or pretty much anything else. And I’m generally angry that we have to do this rather than actually fixing the brokenness in our society.

But I still showed up at 8:00 and filed into the auditorium with everyone else . Chief and some of his officers (the SRO, Detective T, and Sergeant J) began by showing us the tools they’d use that day (a gun modified to fire blanks, an air horn, the nerf guns) and then spoke about what the police had learned from incidents like Columbine and Sandy Hook, the learning experiences of our lockdown, etc, etc... Then they explained ALICE itself. I suspect The Principal told The Police Chief to anticipate some of the things I’d ask because he was quick to say they’re not endorsing that particular company, we’re not paying for the training, they’re taking their own time to be here, they just want to empower us with more options. 

(Spoiler: I’m still not feeling empowered).

When they did pause for questions, I thought to myself, well, now or never, and I asked for proof that ALICE training is effective. The Chief and his officers showed some information about survival rates when students/staff chose to lockdown versus barricade doors or flee, which didn’t quite get at what I was asking since it didn’t tell me what those people were or weren’t trained to do beforehand. Detective T did say that they know it isn’t perfect, and the drills are stressful. One of my colleagues said kids get used to them, and that’s probably true, but someone had to say that they shouldn’t have to (and neither should we). So I said it.

Cue a lot of people, including Sergeant J, getting annoyed and telling me variations on, “This is the world we live in.”

They finished their presentation, opened the floor for questions again, and I put my hand back up. I told Chief I was grateful that he and his officers had come in- I didn’t want their impression to be that I’m not- and that I understood the benefits of learning how to not be a sitting duck, but I still wasn’t convinced of the necessity and efficacy of the practical drills. Detective T said that I would see improvement after the first one, and I cut him off and said it’s still just training, though, and there’s no way to make training realistic enough without it being too dangerous, and all the training in the world didn’t keep the SRO at Parkland from running and hiding. Cue more annoyance directed at me. 

Detective T wasn’t annoyed, though. He told me to go through the training and see what I thought afterwards, which wasn’t an unreasonable ask, and I did pull him aside as we were heading out of the auditorium to apologize for being snippy (the apology was accepted). I probably could’ve tried harder to go into the drills with an open mind, but I just couldn’t get the wrongness of having to do them out of my head, and I couldn’t get myself to be less angry. I got more angry, actually, because so many people were treating it like a competition- we’re divided into six groups, let’s see whose group doesn’t get shot!- and that just seemed so messed up to me. So when my group started to discuss “a plan,” I reminded them that there is no planning in a real situation because it’s sudden, so we’re already making the scenario unrealistic. Nobody really talked to me after that, and I guess that’s fair.

And during the debrief, Mr. F told me to knock off my negativity because it wasn’t helpful, which was also fair. But he’s one of my closest friends, so between that and the apparent enthusiasm everyone else was showing- even folks who’d had similar objections to mine just yesterday- I just felt really alone at that point. I went back to my classroom and took a breather, and wondered if it really is just me, if I’m crazy for hating that we had to do this today, and thinking trying to have fun with it is gross, and not wanting to accept “this is the world we live in.” 

I came back out for lunch- pizza, courtesy of our administrators- and did what I’d been asked to do: knocked off the negativity. The Police Chief stuck around afterwards for one more round of questions and comments, and the conversation turned towards how to roll this out the students. I thought about asking him one more time to convince me that the practical drills make a significant difference, but I knew people were done with me, at that point, and it wouldn’t actually change any of the decision-making going forward, so I just... took the L.

My cacophonous friends spent the rest of the afternoon playing ball in the hallway, and pushing each other in Mr. F’s desk chair because it’s got awesome wheels. I didn’t want to bring down the mood, so I stayed in my room and did the readings for an online course I’ve got coming up. At least, I did until Mrs. T’s son, who’s got today off from school, of course, burst into my room to hug me and drag me out into the hall for the fun. Can’t say no to a little kid, you know?

The high school where I work is a polling place (and the line to vote wrapped around the whole parking lot when polls opened), and so are a few of the other schools in the district, so today was a teacher workshop day rather than a school day. Bonus: those start at 8:00 instead of 7:30, so I got to sleep in a bit, which was delightful. 

Less delightful: something’s triggering my allergies, and my eyes were all red and itchy, and I looked like I was crying. I had so many people ask me if something was wrong. So awkward. 

The agenda for the morning was work in our departments on CBE stuff because, y’know, there will be life after the pandemic and we do have to continue our transition to competency-based education at some point. Mrs. Z suggested that we tackle something that’s been on our to-do list for a while: developing rubrics we can use across courses. I had a writing rubric that I’d been using in World based on some “I can” statements our department had written last year, so I shared it as a starting point, and we discussed ways to simplify it, make the language more student-friendly, make it clear what it means to score a 1-4 on each criterion. Teamwork makes that kind of thing so much easier. We banged that out, then did one for presentations, and then it was time for lunch.

Mrs. W, Mrs. T, and I all grabbed take out from the deli near the school (so good), and ate together in the second floor staff room. We chatted a little about the election, and about what I’m going to do tomorrow (videoconference with my APGOV students since I don’t have them in class this rotation), and so on. 

After that, we all went to our rooms to work independently. I spent the time tinkering some upcoming World assessments and adding our new rubrics to them, writing a couple college recs, and commenting on students’ essay drafts. Then I went down to check on Mr. N, and make sure he knew how to enter report card comments in PowerSchool since the quarter is ending on Friday. I fielded a few questions about referrals and other interventions, as well. 

I grabbed a coffee on the way home, and now I’m settling in to watch election coverage (and will undoubtedly have to respond to lots of messages and Remind texts from my current and former GOV students tonight, heh). I hope you’re all voting!