Ever wonder why your teacher acted like they didn't like you?

It probably wasn't that the teacher didn't like you, it was probably that they felt like they were getting dumped on a little.

Normally I'm not one to complain when it comes to my job. It's a job that I mostly enjoy and that I get paid to do. If I loved every second of it, I suppose I could work pro bono. But they pay me to put up with the parts I don't particularly enjoy so I put up with it. But when I feel like my kids are getting dumped on, it's time to take action. Now all in all I'll say that most of our teacher inservice things have been, at least on some level, beneficial. But after today I was left wondering, why didn't they finish? Let me explain.

Generally about anywhere you teach you have this system that you get evaluated under. Ours is called PDAS. As a teacher, everyone must go through PDAS training. This training takes about three and a half hours and there are a total of 3 or 4 folks at my school who need to have it... including myself. Surely you would take care of such things during inservice right? Surely you wouldn't want to pay a sub to take the place of a teacher when the teacher is there at school and perfectly healthy right? Surely you would rather have a teacher teaching kids rather than a sub handing out some lame assignment that the teacher threw together at the last second right? Surely... SURELY you care enough about the kids, the curriculum, and your own budget enough not to do this RIGHT?! wrong....

So PDAS training happens flat in the middle of the week. dumb. So a sub gets hired to do my job even though I'm in the building. dumb. So my kids get saddled with a sub they don't know, a junk assignment that they don't like and will get little to nothing out of. dumb. All so I can go see how we get evaluated? dumb, dumb, dumb. My mind is all dumbed out today.
I just flat out can't understand what goes through people's head sometimes. Some teachers may well like this idea. It's a break from the kids perhaps. But I don't see it that way. As much as I like the other teachers, truthfully I would hate the place were it not for my kids. Each class is different and while they all come with different challenges they also all come with different things to enjoy. So I don't see it as a break. Quite the opposite in fact.

So what possible explanation could there be? Well in my short time of student teaching and now teaching a real class I've noticed something. No matter what district you're at, there seem to be alot of people in some mystical land of education that rain bits of colossal teaching poop down on us from time to time. This is where the idea and especially the practice of TAKS came in. It's also where you get beauties like benchmark testing, cross subject post it note taking, days on end of hoo-rah inservice where teachers are encouraged to do things they have no idea how to do... the list goes on and on. Who are these educational geniuses? Well to be honest I can't be sure. But there are certain things we do know about them.
1. They have never been teachers. Perhaps they have been but it's been 5 to 10 years since they have. So we're looking for someone out of touch with both kids and faculty.
2. They're really smart on paper. Check the walls folks. These cats have PhDs. You better listen to what they have to say... they've written stuff.
3. They have great ideas but suck at implementation. I hate to but let's go back to TAKS. Overall I don't think it's a terrible idea to make sure kids aren't just being taught how to color in social studies. But in practice.... An 11th grade US history teachers job depends on one of two things. 1) The 8th grade teachers were so good at teaching pre-civil war American history that the students haven't forgotten ANY of it. or 2) The aforementioned 11th grade teacher is really good at review. When kids are forced to answer detailed questions about things they learned 3 years prior, you can just bet they'll have forgotten what they learned. The outcome is that US history stops at Birmingham and restarts at Jamestown. ugh... So while on some level TAKS is a good idea, they've completely blown the implementation.
4. They're into the latest fads. What's that you say? Boxy Ray-bans from the 80's are in?! I gotta get some! COW charts and video conferencing are in?! Who cares if it looks good on us or not? Gotta keep with the times! These schoolhouse smarty pants types are always looking for the new and improved... even if all it really is is recycled poo...
5. Lastly, they really, really like to hear themselves talk. Or perhaps they like to hear a proxy talk about their ideas for them. Either way, they've been working they're whole careers looking for ways to make you a crappier, less efficient, more frustrated teacher. Once they pull it off, they just can't wait to tell you about it.

So be on the lookout for these titans of the industry folks. They are the educator you can only hope to be.

And for you students... your teacher doesn't hate you. They just hate the crap that comes with teaching you.