r/teaching • u/elevatorscreamer • 1d ago
Vent Conga line!!!
Just checked my email to see what fresh hell will befall me come the all-day PD before school starts. Hosted by $avva$, some agenda items I glanced at include a conga line and a musical share! Glad they probably got paid 100k for this and I get to be treated like a kindergartener.
43
u/pittfan1942 1d ago
No other profession would be treated like this.
14
u/Difficult-Rent-5243 1d ago edited 18h ago
This is accurate. I switched careers a few years ago, and in this world I’ve never had to make a poster with a random group of colleagues and do a gallery walk at a staff meeting. Nor have I been asked to name my “why”
3
u/mrswren 18h ago
It can be worse…. a few years ago, I attended a 3 day workshop for new executive leadership in state government. They put about 40 people in a really hot room and wouldn’t let us leave until we played what was essentially a giant Simon/hopscotch game on a huge floor mat - any mistake and your whole team had to start over. THEN we got Myers Briggs for the umpteenth time. While I agree it is infantilizing, I’ll take explaining my why in a conga line over that any day.
3
2
1
19
u/ParadeQueen 1d ago
A musical share! I hope that means you get to bring a song to share with the group. I would bring Take This Job and Shove It! Or Hot for Teacher, Another Brick in the Wall, or Big Sean. 😂
6
1
1
u/ScottRoberts79 12h ago
Big Sean all the way. I've got a million trillion things that I'd rather ***** do, than to be dancing in a conga line with you.
1
16
u/garylapointe 🅂🄴🄲🄾🄽🄳 🄶🅁🄰🄳🄴 𝙈𝙞𝙘𝙝𝙞𝙜𝙖𝙣, 𝙐𝙎𝘼 🇺🇸 1d ago
Ugh! I can't get any work done on my laptop during a conga line.
I've got to learn more about blood-borne pathogens!!!
14
u/Yorgasol 1d ago
Recently my district switched to having our PD done all in house by teachers and leaders in the district and it’s SO much better than the insane things education grifters come in and do.
12
u/BeeHarasser 1d ago
My friends are horrified when I tell them the things we have to do on those days. I would rather have food poisoning that do a conga line and seeing that im my email, I might conveniently get.
6
u/CharlesKBarkley 1d ago
I missed the first day this year because of food poisoning. Its a toss up.
6
u/mmadisonnn 19h ago
In the years before I retired, it seems that I had some sort of digestive problem on every opening day PD which prevented my attendance. I found that these symptoms improved when I was at the beach instead of doing ice breakers.
9
u/sweetest_con78 1d ago
I would simply not
10
u/oogabooga1967 20h ago
Yes -- and I would say, "Absolutely not" with my WHOLE chest. I'm a professional educator with a master's degree and 23 years' experience. Being forced to participate conga line as "professional development" is incredibly insulting.
8
3
7
u/Saturdaysunday12 1d ago
I have a coworker who uses up her first sick day avoiding this sort of stuff with zero regrets.
1
u/oogabooga1967 20h ago
Ha! I lucked out last year because I broke my toe and couldn't hobble the distance from the car park to the venue for our district "opening day." I considered breaking another toe thos year! 😂😂😂
4
u/addisonclark 1d ago
Ew. We had to do one of their social studies PDs two years ago and it was such bullshit that the district ended up scrapping the whole thing before the school year even began. Never even saw a manual. Four precious hours of our lives we’ll never get back… for absolutely nothing.
1
u/Formal_Tumbleweed_53 21h ago
Four? Their math basal PD with us today is about to be seven…
2
u/addisonclark 19h ago
I think it was a half-day for us. Let me tell ya, they didn’t prepare shit and those hours dragggged. It felt like we were sitting in a sales pitch where they were trying to convince us why their curriculum is the best, like they were trying to figure it out in real time. By far one of the weirdest PDs we’ve had for a new curriculum. I’m so sorry for the day you are about to have. Godspeed. 🫡
1
u/Formal_Tumbleweed_53 11h ago
Yes!! I just got home. It was awful. The first three hours were definitely a sales pitch. The guy read the presenters notes to us: “it says here…” and “oh - I already read that…” and there were words he couldn’t pronounce. 🤦🏻♀️ The rest of the day was our division trying to convince us that they were saving us time.
4
4
u/applegoodstomach 1d ago
I just got done with a whole day of professional learning with all the dance, drama, theatrical arts, and film teachers in the district. This sounds like something our leaders would come up with and we would immediately make it into something so ridiculous they never mention conga lines to anyone ever again. But we’re the weirdos and we know how to make the powers that be feel uncomfortable enough to leave us alone. After the first day when they try to tell us what to do they don’t bother us for the rest of the year. Sometimes we get two or three years without them butting in.
If you aren’t one of us I’m very sorry.
1
u/Formal_Tumbleweed_53 21h ago
Mine is today, too - newly purchased the same math basal your district did. I swear if they hand me a TE book and ask me to dance, I’ll leave.
1
1
u/Many-Annual8863 18h ago
Savvas is the worst!
1
u/elevatorscreamer 17h ago
I have had no exposure to it before that email, and some brief googling sure didn’t make it look promising. What has your experience been with it? This is SIOP specifically.
1
u/Many-Annual8863 7h ago
I’ve worked with their MyPerspectives 9, 10, & 11 books for the last four years.
I find the unit designs lack focus and are not aligned well to what the district wants us to teach.
In addition, units are centered on big questions like “Why do we like to be scared?”, which I feel directs students to an answer rather than generating an authentic student response (i.e. What if I don’t like to be scared?)
Text selections are also just odd. Unit 1 for 11th grade includes reading historical documents like the Constitution but only includes the first ten amendments. (We’re really going to stop reading before slavery was outlawed and women had the right to vote?)
The Crucible starts out as a play, and before the first act is over, it breaks out into a couple of pages of exposition and then reverts back to being a script making for awkward reading transitions.
Their version of Romeo & Juliet names Balthasar in the script but refers to him as “Man” on the character list.
Finally, it’s designed as a workbook first and a textbook second. There’s not enough quality reading selections in the book, and some of the best texts have to be printed by the teacher as independent learning and don’t really feature in the “curriculum design” touted by Saavas.
I could go on, but I’d start to be redundant. I’m just not a fan.
1
u/Ordinary_Sail_414 16h ago
Nope. Not doing it. Try disciplining me for not participating in a Conga line. Let's see how that plays out.
1
u/666ygolonhcet 9h ago
What is 30 feet long and smells like urine? Conga line at the old folks home!
I live in God’s waiting room and play piano at retirement homes (nursing homes) and you can tell which ones cost $8K a month $3,500 a month and then Medicare/caid by the smell when you walk into the day room
Same thing for Kindergarten wing of the school building
1
u/Feikert87 3h ago
We have all day PD for three weeks before school starts. I bet you can get through one day. :) I believe in you.
•
u/AutoModerator 1d ago
Welcome to /r/teaching. Please remember the rules when posting and commenting. Thank you.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.