Getting to the Heart of the Matter

http://shrewdnessofapes.blogspot.com/2007/12/at-least-watching-paint-dry-would-be.html

I love the Shrewdness of Apes. Ms. Cornelius is a teacher who gets it AND still has a sense of humor about it. In response to a poorly planned consulting session, she has this to say: But we got to listen to a gentleman who had been flown hundreds of miles in to be our consultant talk on and on and on and on. It took him seven and a half hours to talk about something that we completely grasped in 20 minutes.

For. The. Love. Of. Mike.

Really.

This was a 90% waste of money, and a 95% waste of time.

Here are some ideas that could be useful:
Violence prevention. Morale and team building-- we sorely need it after a rough six months in which the staff pulled together after tragedies and valiantly gave freely of their own time to re-establish our community's sense of equilibrium. Or perhaps strategies to improve student fluency and especially vocabulary in the content areas. More training for teachers with co-teachers-- PLEASE! More training on our idiotic gradebook program.

And that's just for starters.

If you don't feed the teachers, they'll eat the students. Well not really, but they certainly will get surly or exhausted. I bet if you ask teachers what they deal with on a day-to-day basis, ask them what problems aren’t going away and what they need to make the situation better, at least a few will have concise, analytic topics to offer.