Mental Overdrive
23 Jun 2009 9 Comments
Posting will probably be light this week– my girls are in California on a long-awaited trip with my MIL, but I’m at a week-long professional development workshop as well, so my blogging time will be brief, but also a lot of my mental energy is engaged elsewhere.
This is my first intensive workshop like this since I started teaching at Single Sex School, and while I expected to feel a bit funny about being a student again, I am actually really enjoying it. Sure, I feel a bit overloaded– we did a lot today, and today was only the first day, and I lugged home an enormous binder and left a comparable spiral-bound book there, plus a smaller book I brought home, and I have homework, a reading assignment. And yeah, getting up early enough to be at school by 8 was not too pleasant after sleeping in all weekend.
But it also reminded me how great it feels to be in a room full of people who are earnestly engaged in trying to understand new ideas, and more importantly, to be one of those people, instead of the sap in front trying to keep it all running. I didn’t have to manage the situation, or be “on stage,” or attempt to meet everyone’s needs at once. I got to read, write, and talk about new ideas and old with people I respect and admire and like working with more and more. And I know I wasn’t the only one– at each break and during lunch, I could hear people saying, “Hey, don’t you think this would really help a kid like Ninth Grade Girl? And wouldn’t this really help with those quizzes students kept failing?” There were people there from grades from K-12 and several different branches of administrative departments.
Professional development, or “professional days,” often get a bad rap for being pointless, redundant, or ineffectual. I’m too new at this kind of teaching to really say, but after my experience today, and after reading about thirty-three Baltimore-area teachers going to Space Camp, it seems pretty clear that professional development can be truly amazing, when done well.
Jun 23, 2009 @ 06:12:00
I love workshops of any kind. They make my brain feel refueled and fresh. Like getting a good work-out in. I hope you have a great time.
Jun 23, 2009 @ 06:47:43
I’m hoping that by the end of the week, I feel less overloaded and more fueled, but it did feel really great to be jotting down notes for my classes and feeling that inspiration. I have felt that way before i na writing workshop, but this is my first time in a teaching workshop.
Jun 23, 2009 @ 19:13:30
I’ve been to both kinds. I love good workshops and really enjoy being a student but I get angry when my precious time is wasted by bad ones – especially invalid Ruby Payne crap (sigh). I’m glad you’re getting a good one!
Jun 24, 2009 @ 05:05:49
LSM, did you have to go to a Ruby Payne workshop? I’ve read about her in “Rethinking Schools” before and that stuff is so infuriating. I wish there was an alternative to her crap, because I think teachers could really benefit from more sophisticated/accurate thinking about poverty, class and education.
Jun 24, 2009 @ 09:08:06
Yes, they made us go to one. It was very vomit-inducing. I just want to slap her. One thing about teaching that gives me the creeps is that one would think that teachers would be somewhat more intellectual than those entering other professions and more insistent on the use of rigorous research, etc. – but not-so-much! Argh.
Jun 25, 2009 @ 06:45:21
LSM, I think part of paying teachers at a more professional level of salary would have to include a more rigorous selection/training process for sure.
But I also have to say that one of the benefits of this workshop for me, since it includes a cross-section of our faculty and staff from K-12 is that I’ve realized what a great and smart group of teachers I get to work with, and how interested we all are in becoming better teachers, even those who have been doing it for a few decades already. But again, since it’s a private school, we have a wide range of experience and education represented as well.
Jun 25, 2009 @ 22:20:22
I am very impressed with the teaching and commitment of practically all the teachers I know and I would not want anyone to judge their performance , etc, any more harshly because I think they are already expected to take on way too much. It is the way poorly tested or untested research is so liberally used in education policy-making that troubles me, and the way so many teachers are not very interested in intellectual pursuits generally, even when they are excellent at and devoted to teaching their course. Seems like teachers should model the life of the mind….but it isn’t like we get a lot of time for such things during the year, either, so I don’t know.
Jun 26, 2009 @ 03:25:14
I think partly what you’re talking about is intellectual curiosity, which is separate from intelligence and often isn’t present in people who are very good teachers or even who are well-educated. It’s the quality that keeps people wanting to learn more and more about the subject area or about education, when it’s much easier to just stick with what you know.
And yeah, the way research and policy get made is often troubling. I think it’s also crazy how often those same researchers and policy-makers have never spent a day teaching– you can’t isolate theory from practice, but they continue to try, which divides us when we could be working together.
Jun 28, 2009 @ 07:50:29
Yes.