CURMUDGUCATION: The Thirteen Presenters Who Will Ruin Your First Day Back

CURMUDGUCATION: The Thirteen Presenters Who Will Ruin Your First Day Back

The Thirteen Presenters Who Will Ruin Your First Day Back

It's been a great summer. You've had a chance to recharge and reflect. You've developed some new ideas, units, and materials, and most importantly, away from the dailiness of the job, you have gotten back in touch with all the reasons you love the work. You cannot wait to get back to it., take a couple of in service days to get fully up to speed, and then-- bring on the students!

Unfortunately, your administration thinks that your very first day(s) back should be spent sitting in some professional development sessions. In some lucky few school districts, these sessions will actually be useful and even  inspiring. But if you are really unfortunate, you'll spend those sessions with one of these soul-crushing people:

The Defense Specialist

"I'm here to remind you that at any moment this year, someone might burst into your room and kill you and your students. I'm going to talk about how you should react when someone is about to shoot you, presenting a variety of scenarios and details of previous shootings that will all be so vivid that for the rest of this week you won't be able to concentrate on teaching material because you're too busy looking for hiding places in the room, peering into your own soul to consider whether or not you are the kind of person who would die for your students, and just generally staring into the abyss of human mortality and brutality."

The Social Issues Specialist

"I'd like to talk to you about some issue that affects your students-- something like hunger or poverty or gang violence or homelessness or whatever drug is currently out of control. I will remind you that many of your students are being slowly crushed by forces outside of your control and you CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: The Thirteen Presenters Who Will Ruin Your First Day Back