Summer workshops
Education workshops are notorious for being time wasting activities to earn credit and offer teachers the tiniest bit of useful information. They are, by most assessments, necessary evils…more evil than necessary. Occasionally, you will encounter an exceptional workshop that provides valuable information and resources. Regrettably, I am not attending one of the exceptional ones.
I do not blame the presenter, not 100% anyway. Her resources were prepared well in advance, but were not copied and bound by the time the workshop started Monday. Furlough requirements and poor communication are to blame. Unfortunately, this presenter has yet to develop a back up plan and provide us with instruction worth the $500+ that each participant’s school paid. I fully understand that it is difficult to conduct a workshop when your materials are not provided to all participants and all you have is an Elmo (think digital projector) for your information dissemination, however flexibility is the key to successful teaching. Let us discuss best practices, or grading strategies…anything! Yesterday, the last hour was spent working on pacing guides for our syllabus while newbies were gaining instruction on how to complete their audit. Valuable for them I hope, but I didn’t sign up for the newbie workshop and my guides are complete. Today, the last hour was spent working on our syllabus. I worked on updates and accomplished something, but it would have been just as effective to complete from the comfort of my own home.
Don’t get me wrong, there have been gems of information and we have received textbook samples that are valuable. Unfortunately, the gems are few and far between. We spent today, all day, pouring over DBQ strategies. Great, wonderful, a nice refresher and excellent for newbies. It was an activity worthy of two hours…not seven. We spent thirty minutes on each document and discussed it in depth, then evaluated the DBQ as a whole. That’s great and all, but again…not supposed to be a newbie workshop.
Maybe my expectations are wrong. I was hoping for new activities, new strategies, and innovative ideas for presenting information in a fast and effective manner. Tomorrow we are supposed to receive resource binders. I hope the workshop improves.
