Professional Development: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Journal 33)

A workshop I sat through that made me proud to be part of the audience......

I was blessed enough to be a part of Harvard's Center for Mideast Studies Egypt Forum.  Paul Beran was our leader, and he is brilliant.  He knew just which books to read, which films to recommend, which questions to ask, and how to challenge us to think through ways to bring the Middle East back to our New England classrooms.  He challenged us to choose novels, provided cuisine from the area, and whet our palates and senses with music, photography, and field trips.  Any time I went to one of these meetings, I felt as though I was a part of something important, that I was truly doing good work.

In Egypt, we met with the Fulbright Committee, we visited with World Bank officials, we met a newspaper reporter who had been imprisoned by a dogmatic Muslim regime, we had a late supper at an ex-patriot author's Cairo apartment.  Every activity or seminar I took part of made me feel surrounded by brilliance and happy to be there.  I knew I was part of something important.

I also love workshops where I get handouts, packets, free materials, and practical advice.  I want something to take away and bring back to my classroom, even if only in the form of new information.  That's what makes a good quality workshop.

A workshop I sat through that was not helpful.........

I have been forced to sit through many unhelpful workshops.  Workshops are hard for me because I enter with high expectations: I want to learn something knew.  I yearn to be told about resources or texts that I didn't know existed before.  This is more challenging than it sounds.  For the most part, though, our scheduled in-service days are the most horrendous waste of my time imaginable.  They are full of buzzwords and taking heads; important-sounding jargon is thrown around, we pat ourselves on the back, but no real work is ever accomplished.  Nothing ever really changes or improves as a result of these in-service days.  I say this even as an individual who has been charged on no less than three different occasions with leading school-wide in-service workshops.  There is little accountability, and little respect.  Teachers sit there playing videos or engaging in on-line poker tournaments instead of listening.  Fellow colleagues are downright hostile or disagreeable.  They feel put upon and disinterested, and there is no true accountability to make sure that anything changes or is implemented anew as a result. It's a little disheartening sometimes...