Thursday, September 03, 2009

Raining Training

Mrs C went back to school yesterday for the celebration of nonsense otherwise known as Training Day. A deluge of new ideas, strategies and plans was breathlessly announced by the Senior Leadership Team (go on-try and say those three words with a straight face) which varied from the merely unworkable (kids with ADHD go straight to the front of the canteen queue) to the downright bizarre. (Wearing a different coloured hat, depending on something or other)

One that didn't make the list was:

"Make the kids sit quietly in neat rows and teach them something useful"

5 comments:

Fran Hill said...

You do realise, don't you, that the training days are deliberately like this so that you feel grateful when you finally get on with the teaching. For an hour or so, anyway.

MarkUK said...

I've just started work (support staff) at a brand new Academy. It had been a comp where an OFSTED "satisfactory" was greeted with unbounded joy.

Unlike most academies, this one has no students. Instead, it has pupils. It has a Head Boy and a Head Girl.

In the predecessor school, some teachers ("learning facilitators"?) used to let the kids call them by their first name. Not any more. Sir/Miss is compulsory, or Mr Jones/Mrs Smith. The uniform (I know that's a dirty word) is traditional, with blazer & tie.

Chewing gum is banned, even at break. Children are issued with a list of the things that are likely to get them into trouble, the consequences and how these escalate.

The Principal seems a nice enough bloke, but he looks like a rotweiler on steroids. I won't be crossing him in a hurry; I suggest the kids don't either.

The Senior Management Team are all genuinely enthusiastic, and it appears to be rubbing off on the staff.

Could we be seeing a return to boundaries & discipline? Time will tell.

Anonymous said...

My experience of start of year 'training days':

Sit in whole school 'bollocking session' to hear of the latest rise in results and set targets for next year.

Sit through the new members of SLT presenting something they have copied and pasted from the internet which just explains how to identify such things as 'creative thinking' and 'progression analysis'.

Feel incredibly patronised and worthless before heading off to a meeting on how to impliment 'KS3 intervention strategies'.

Feel your will to live leave your body while wishing you were somewhere far away, like Kabul perhaps.

Sit in another meeting on 'curriculum enhancement'.

Contemplate suicide.

Realise that you have only been left ten minutes of the school day to plan your lessons for the next week while being badgered for set targets for the year nine group that you only just found out that you were teaching half an hour ago.

Watch the SLT members slap themselves on the back before disappearing for another year to write next years training day presentations.

Realise that you have more in common with the kids than the self-important pricks that you work under.

Start counting down the days till half-term.

Lilyofthefield said...

In Leeds is it, Mark UK? Sounds familiar.
Just how difficult do teachers want to make their job? Just how easy do trainees think it will be to engage hundreds of arsy adolescents in meaningful toil?
"Make the kids sit quietly in neat rows and teach them something useful" is about the most practical suggestion I've heard this decade.

phatboy said...

At my old school, training days were held in bars in Calais so far as I could work out. If you were friendly with the teachers you could even get them to brink some booze back for your parents.