NYC Educator: The Thing

NYC Educator: The Thing

The Thing

Nothing strikes fear into a teacher's heart quite like the prospect of another day of PD on the New Thing. There are all these programs, based on the presumption that you're doing everything wrong, and trying to get you to correct yourself and do everything right. Right there you've already lost. It's like you're five years old and someone is telling you to drink castor oil for your own good.

First, no one wants to do anything for their "own good." Doing something for your own good is virtually always synonymous with doing something you don't want to do. More importantly, the people who claim to know what's good for you, well, they're often way off base. The implicit assumption of a whole lot of PDs is that we don't know what we're doing. I sat for several hours a few weeks ago while some highly paid corporate functionary told me what is and is not a good story.

It wasn't as bad as the first time they came, when we compared and contrasted crap with good writing, but all in all it was not a productive use of my time. I'd argue that if I, as an English teacher, were unable to distinguish between cleverness and crap there would be something amiss that a three-hour workshop would be unlikely to correct. The assumption that I don't know the difference, though, is insulting, and that's what you get from a lot of PD.

At a friend's school they simulated a sweat shop and had to make things. I saw pictures of baskets they created. This might be a great activity for a social studies class. In fact, given that I teach immigrants, it might be a great activity for my class. This is the sort of work my grandparents had to do when they came here. For all I know, this is what my students' parents are still doing. And in the US of A in 2019 working newcomers are reviled for doing work a whole lot of Americans wouldn't dream of doing. It's great to see someone break out of the New Thing Mode.

I wonder why PD can't consist of us going somewhere and doing something, perhaps as a model for something we'd go and do with our students. I once took my students to the CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: The Thing