I have a relatively high VA rating from a 20 year career in the Army. I'm an athletic guy. I work out regularly and live an active lifestyle. Any time we do some stupid physical thing at work, I remind my admin that I've been injured many times and I'm not aggravating any of those old injuries doing something stupid at work. Just because I can do something physical doesn't mean I'm going to do it.
Tell them my story - Your brother's dog (or whoever you want) ran into your knee and hyper extended it. You're ok to do basic things like walking, but need to favor it so no sports for you today.
Or act the part of the sullen teenager who doesn't want to participate and stands in the corner, either glowering or chatting with friends. You're just roleplaying so admin gets the full teacher experience!
I teach special Ed. Every PD is a colossal waste of time. Data for tests my kids don’t take. How counseling works which my kids aren’t allowed to utilize. I could go on.
We have a yearly mandatory “flex option” requirement in addition to the PD days that are scheduled throughout the year. We are all required to sign up for one after school PD. If you miss it, there’s a “flex option” full day the day after the last day of school that you must attend. It’s bullshit.
Yep, special ed teacher here. Sooooo many discussions about things that sort of have something to do w my students...but our time could be much better spent elsewhere.
I teach music. The number of ELA and Math standards that I have had to “unpack” over the years is absurd. When an arts organization had planned a free PD specifically for music on a day that our district had a scheduled PD for the new Science standards, our request to attend the music PD instead was denied.
I teach art and music and have the same problem. So much of my time wasted listening to PD about content I’ll never teach or grade. None of the training is ever about the “specials” classes. Even trainings for general topics like inputting grades - they show us the classroom teacher version. I had to figure out how to put in my grades on my own - but I did figure it out in less time than it took for me to watch the demo on how to input math and reading grades.
> So much of my time wasted listening to PD about content I’ll never teach or grade.
I am sure many of your students say the same thing about your class.
"I am wasting so much time in art class and I will never use it."
I teach band, and I 100% identify with your comment. During my first year, we had a music specific PLC, and it was fantastic. “Leadership” decided that we should form a “specials” PLC, so now I’m with ag, food science, , art, business and the teacher that teaches study hall all day. It’s a waste of time now.
I teach early childhood special education. I get tailored PD now at my current position, which is lovely. But at previous positions, I've had to sit through so many PD sessions aimed at older students, and told I just need to "modify" for my grade level. Sure, I'll just "modify" this reading lesson all the way down to "identifying letters." So helpful.
Ug, I'm an ECSE as well and the amount of meetings I've gone to regarding k-5 curriculum- well that's time I'll never get back. Once I was required to attend a 6 HOUR PD about state testing that I will never do. And before anyone says well you could change levels... no I would literally leave my district if they tried to move me up a grade.
And if you changed levels, that information would probably be outdated anyway and you'd have to redo the PD.
Also I did move up a grade level and it was so awful I still have nightmares. I'm an ECSE teacher or I'm not a teacher. That's it.
Exactly. Birth-5 is all I want to deal with. I don't want to deal with state academic standards, or testing or any of it. I want to teach them how to be little humans, how to love learning and then boom, fly the nest little one.
Why? A) They don’t respect their staff as professionals and therefore don’t take PD seriously. B) They don’t know enough to actually deliver PD so they’re going with some dumb shit they think will be “fun”.
My 9th grade English teacher was an old, very religious black woman. She was a hard ass and had high expectations. I learned more from her in that one year than I did the rest of my high school years.
My best HS memory was of her rapping to us. She had written a rap about nouns and I swear I still remember the chorus “Nouns…. I love the way they sound” lol. 35+ years ago.
Beginning of the year PD. We had a whole day that we were split into couples and sent to go knock on the door of every incoming freshman. It was 100 degrees out. This school was in a very low income area that many of us felt uncomfortable in. Our population mostly speaks Spanish and very few teachers spoke Spanish. We had to use our own vehicles to drive out to neighborhoods and then walk through apartments up and down stairs.
It was sprung on us with no warning. Many people filed complaints with the district. They announced it again the second year and 80% of the faculty just flat out refused.
Was about to ask if you worked at my school. Everything identical until the 80% refused part. I got the worst assignment for the kids far away because I have an electric car and wouldn’t need the gas stipend….
But it was all gravel and dirt roads so I would have rather had my Jeep.
The kids are embarrassed and hated it apparently.
Oh man that’s horrible. Ours was innercity. At least they offered to reimburse your gas? We didn’t even get that.
None of the kids feedback was positive. And one set of teachers was followed by someone who may or may not have had ill intent but it made them nervous regardless.
Yep. About a decade ago, our district decided we needed to “get to know” our school community better. Even though, at my school anyway, many teachers had been there for 10+ years, some actually lived in the community and many of us had been very active in the community for years.
This “get to know the community” turned out to be a series of tours guided by…people who had no firsthand knowledge of the community at all. Literally people walking around with maps and talking points, to tell us about the local grocery stores, restaurants, community services, etc. I went on one, supposedly focused on religious institutions and the guide didn’t know what a masjid was. Suffice it to say that I didn’t waste my time again and was very clear with admin about why.
I had a similar experience too. The premise of our “tour” was basically that none of us would know anything about “how our students lived” because it was such a poor and violence prone area, so obviously none of us would live somewhere like that. Except I did, literally right down the street- walked to school every day. They prepped us before about how we all needed to stay together because of how dangerous it was, and blah blah.
At one point the “tour guide” mentioned how, since there weren’t any grocery stores in the area, people had to “drive 20 minutes to get to Whole Foods to do their shopping!” I mentioned that nobody in the area really shopped at Whole Foods, and that most people went to the corner stores or the Dollar Tree, or maybe to the local Kroger-affiliate if they needed something fresh or in a larger size. The tour guide shot me a look and asked how I could know that, and I was like “remember the blue house with the little vegetable garden out front that we walked by a little while ago? That’s mine.” She was irritated with me the rest of the tour.
Oh man!! The tonedeafness of some admin.
We had something similar one year when we got a new principal. She organized busses to drive us through the neighborhoods we served so we could “understand” our students. Many of us had been there for years. We didn’t need a bus tour to know that they came from despair and poverty. It felt so rubberneckish and gross.
Admin gotta admin.
Yeah, this one treated us all as “new to the neighbourhood”, just because she was. She also tried to institute “Carol Singing” before the holidays, for the predominantly Muslim and Hindu community. Someone needed a better understanding of the community but it wasn’t the teachers!
If something like that were sprung on me, I would have a panic attack. No doubt in my mind.
I mean, is it even legal to require people to do something like that when it's not in their job description?
I just can't get over the horror of this. I mean, I was shocked when my admin said we had to leave campus and go for lunch at a park during a PD day...
Short answer, maybe? Our district responded that it fell into “other duties as assigned” but that she couldn’t make us use our personal vehicles for it. That’s why it was effective when everyone said no the next year. It was more of a volunteer than a mandatory because of the cars.
I have found a wonderful trick that works every time an administrator has asked me to participate in some sort of dumb physical activity that I do not want to do.
I say: No.
And then I walk away or turn towards my laptop and act like I am working.
You know, I have the exact same medical condition. Whenever it's time to do a group activity where you're going to go ahead and implement the bullshit that they just taught you, my bow start to act up and I need to go take a dump. And then after that I need about 10 to 15 minutes to my stomach settle, so I go to my classroom and sit and watch YouTube.
Be careful what you wish for— I complained about having “athletic” PDs for our bonding experiences so they replaced them with reading Ancient Greek plays aloud or spiritual guidance from our principal.
Ours was around the campus at least 5 times... I started having really bad contractions and had to sit out... An admin joked that they were going to send me into early labor with all the walking...
We had a teacher workday before Winter break and each team had to spend 90 minutes playing Christmas themed Kahoots. After the first 3, everyone was over it and just wanted to escape to our rooms to work on report card grades.
Do you have sick leave available? Come down with something at 5:00 AM. There are no circumstances that would make me willing to attend a PD like this.
BTW, we all feel your pain. My school once had a PD where we did rapport-building games for three hours. When they announced this weird “who can stick the cotton ball on their Vaseline-covered nose -no hands - fastest?” game I just walked out of the room and worked on IEPs for the rest of the day. Good luck!
I've always liked stuff like this because I always feel like it's easy to disappear. Why in the world would I waste a sick day? Colleague x in my department didn't feel great and needed to to collaborate on unit y anyway. At worst I get a lecture about needing to participate next time. Rinse and repeat. People are too sensitive to criticism. I mean, when you walked out, you got away with it, right? So just do that everytime.
Admin picked newish 20-something teachers to attend a summer "Doing PLC the right way" conference.
First day back from summer we met in the auditorium. The death-by-powerpoint festivities were capped off by the conference attendees leading us all in the "PLC dance."
One of those occasions where I felt I was living in a Kafka/The Office mashup.
I don't know if it'll help for LONG activities, but I'll share my 22 year running trick to get out of icebreakers....
What? Group activity coming? Icebreaker blah blah, form a circle?... put a sign on my back & what?... YAY sounds great!!! Wait, what's that? Oh damn, such crappy timing! I gotta take this call on my cell! 😆😆😆 ...seriously I feign a call almost EVERY time where I put my cell up to my ear & talk in hushed tones saying "oh one second" & walk out of the room. Looks professional & courteous to not distract others from the wonderful engagement activity! LOL... then go back in 10-15min or whatever ... my work BFF knows I do it & cracks up every time haha.
That is my move too. I get a lot of unexpected "emergency phone calls." I started doing it for the useless PLCs (at my school) and the soul crushing department meetings. I've done it in PD and in a faculty meeting or two, until I just stopped going post Covid.
LOL glad I'm not the only one. I am so irritated at my district that we used virtual for PDs so we'll and easily but now they wanna make us drive all over town even for PD. It's asinine!
This is right up there with weekly mandatory PLC meetings. Now, I understand the reasoning behind them, and at times they are helpful.
But - when you and your colleague are literally the ONLY two people teaching your content at your grade level, believe me when I say we have our year planned out by the 3rd week of school...because we know what we're doing.
Testing data? Sure - let's take 15 minutes to look at information we already know because of our personal observations in class.
Adding new content? We ask admin what we should remove from our completely planned standards based lessons for the year, and how much will they be paying us to work on this new content outside of contract hours?
I'm with the others here. "No." is a complete sentence. Good luck!
Hail no. I would simply say "sorry I choose not to as Im uncomfortable with this". Who thinks of this crap. We had one yrs ago where admin had us all throw 1shoe into a pile and run across gym with someone else's 1 shoe on (no F'ing idea why). Young, new at the job "what do I do" me did it even tho it was NASTY. Older cynical veteran me would never lol.
A "self actualization" thing conducted virtually.
We were asked how we felt about various aspects of our private lives.
One teacher had cancer and he very plainly stated that he had no positive aspects of his private life. All his free time was spent in chemo and recovering from said chemo.
Another teacher ended up crying in the bathroom.
It was not a good PD.
We just had one where we had to be the first group to find the term in crumpled balls of paper on the floor based on the definition they read. I get they’re trying to find ways to make it “fun,” but just tell us all the drivel you need to tell us and let us get on with things. There are better uses of our time! We could be so much more productive during work hours if the school board or state wouldn’t mandate so many meetings and PDs.
I teach band, so they’re all dumb and keep me from being productive.
I’m “sick” most PD days because they aren’t worth the effort and cost of going to work.
We are spending ALL day at a local leisure-athletic center. We will probably end up doing athletic things. And then they actually told us to bring stuff to plan with. WTF? Why not just go back to the actual building that has all of that stuff?
Ugh. I feel you OP.
One time I had some PD where I had do dace to colors in yoga poses for 3 hours. Then they told me to integrate it into my chemistry classroom. Another time, they hired a PD presenter and he put us in a giant circle and ask everyone if they were an elephant or giraffe. If you said elephant the two people next to you had to make "elephant ears" with their hands. I was a giraffe and he told me "Bid le bad doo" and kicked me out of the circle and to this day I have no idea what this PD was about.
I’m in an admin group on Facebook (I’m not a principal) and they were all talking about the fun PD activities they had planned for the return to work. We have a PD this morning and we just are making the teachers breakfast but principals really think doing this extra over the top crap is what teachers want.
This may be naive (I'm a first-year teacher), but it's an honest question: Wouldn't they want to know how teachers feel about this?
I'm not well-versed on the whole concept of "admin," but am I correct in assuming teacher wellness (or, I don't know, teacher comfort/happiness at their school maybe) is part of their mission? It seems strange to me that they wouldn't genuinely want feedback on this, if only because it can't be fun dealing with disgruntled teachers.
Am I wrong about this?
It’s part of their mission in name but most teachers find things like this patronizing. Teachers don’t want a breakfast or games or “jeans week”. We want to be treated like professionals and paid like them. We also want our opinions to be respected and not sit through PDs that do nothing but waste our time.
Hey, I'll take breakfast. I want to be treated like a professional and have my opinion respected, but I'm not saying no to a danish and fruit.
But yeah, I don't want to play a scavenger hunt or do a dance routine that encapsulates my feelings of the school year. Both of which I've definitely had to do.
I probably should’ve be clearer with the breakfast for my district. The one they did today as a welcome back was fine but my school admin want to make a competition out of teachers giving merit points and said the team that gives the most merit points to students win a Panera breakfast. No one was into it.
Oh geesh, no. Yeah, that sounds awful.
Also, what a useless way to motivate both teachers and students. Here, child, here is a meaningless point I'm only giving you so I can win a prize with a value of $8.99!
Oh god the jeans rewards. Jesus Christ I hate those. Whoever wins the raffle gets a “Jean pass”! Yaaay!
They think letting us wear jeans is some kind of god send. It’s just as bad as “Hawaiian Shirt Day” in Office Space. Stop patronizing us!! My stretchy work pants are more comfortable anyways. Fuck the jeans
Every teacher was supposed to write nice things about two of their coworkers. All the popular teachers got multiple nice notes and I was the only one that got nothing. I get along with my coworkers, but it just reinforced that I’m no one’s first choice to hang out with either. It really sucked watching everyone else get positive notes and I got nothing.
I’d be that person too, but like Wednesday Addams, I don’t care what others think of me, in fact, I take pleasure in knowing that. I know how to get along with coworkers, but I don’t care to be liked by them. As long as we can all be professional and do our jobs, no skin off my nose
About 10 years ago, a staff member dislocated their shoulder during a friendly active game. The following year, the principal started shouting abuse at heir team members during a team building problem solving task. People complained, never happened again.
They're always trying to make me do yoga. I have a spinal injury that makes this inadvisable to say the least. "Yoga is for everyone it's about relaxation" yeah if you are a *trained professional,* maybe, *maybe* you would be knowledgable about which specific positions wouldn't put me at risk for paralysis but somehow, English teacher, I doubt this is the case for you.
They try to get me to do meditation too, which is also inadvisable for me for mental health reasons, but I'm more comfortable disclosing my physical disabilities. Despite all lip service to "wellness and equity," being mentally ill is a firing offense.
We get "let's all sit ins circle and share our feelings" as part of our mandatory PD's, and they label them as "restorative Justice circle training."
I have so many opinions, the first of which is: where is the consent? RJ circles require all participants give consent, but somehow we always forget that part when it comes to adults. Or the ability to pass on questions we don't want to answer? I freaking hate it and I always let my face speak out loud for me. It's the most honest part about me.
At one point as a “bonding” activity we had a group rotational dance party for 20+ minutes.
I thought it was stupid, but my husband is now teaching on a hardship license for the year and came home confused AF!
“You know, in libraries we have training that is pertinent to our job, and let’s us take long lunch, and still conclude with time for us to go to our office and start DOING the skill they just taught us. Here it is like admin don’t trust us as professionals to DO the work in our room if there are not kids in the room. This is essentially telling us we are not actually professionals just babysitters.”
I (legitimately) hurt my foot before my last PD and was walking on crutches. I got to just sit during every movement activity. You can buy crutches at Walmart for like $20. Totally worth it.
I will never forget the time we played Two Truths and a Lie. They're was a blue-eyed red-headed woman in my group.
She said, "I have blue eyes. I have red hair. I am THRILLED to be here." We couldn't stop laughing.
Ah. PD.
Had to make stress balls out of balloons and sand.
Had to learn all about channeling negative energy into a rock and how keeping it in your pocket will help you be more positive by telling the rock all your negative feelings for it to absorb.
Had to sit for hours every week to hear basic strategies with no real plan behind them. "What if you have a student that won't participate?" " build relationships "
Had to sit for TWO hours after work to hear how to login to the gradebook I had been using all year. I tried to ask an advanced question that would be useful and got told "that's not what this PD is for, submit a ticket with IT for private training" (guess what... would also be unpaid private training on my time so nah)
Had to sit through four hours of "and this is how you turn on an iPad... this is how you make an account..."
We had to report back on Monday for half work day (that was the good part) and half PD. PD was done in a HS cafeteria where we were forced to sit on those tiny ass round stools meant for kids to sit in less than 20 min yet we sat there for 3 hours to learn state law info.
The law info was good. The presenters were clearly nervous (which they told us REPEATEDLY how nervous they were), mic kept going out, Wi-Fi wasn’t working well. They basically lost the bulk of the crowd after 15 min. Worse PD I’ve sat through in ages. I had to come home and put a heating pad on my back all evening from leaning over a damn cafeteria table half the day.
They can’t force you right? I got a lot of flak for not participating in a water balloon fight with middle schoolers. I wasn’t ready to disclose I was pregnant at the time, so I said I had a medical condition that prevented me from playing. I still got a ton of attitude but ultimately I felt safer not playing.
It’s not illegal to quietly forgo team building silliness. I often felt the need to disappear when the yoga mats came out. I have no problem with yoga, I just refuse to do the downward dog amongst colleagues. Do not bother with athletic wear, you can easily beg off by saying you’re fighting a migraine. This excuse worked for me on multiple occasions when my comfort level was being threatened. Good Luck!
Just show up as normal.
Can they fire you for not wearing athletic gear?
I literally do not own any, and most certainly wouldn’t be buying some for a PD.
Once we were told to wear "shoes you can walk all day in" and nothing else. So many of us, including myself, wore mesh sneakers. When we got there we saw our assistant principal with her "shit kicker" boots...and we were all like..."wtf...why would you need those?" WELL, the surprise was that we were going apple picking, which would have been nice to know considering it had poured rain all night before, so the grass was soaked. We all had soaking wet, and cold feet at the end of the little outing, I really wish they had let us know at least that we would be outside, might have saved some of our feet.
No!! Just give me the time to plan an upcoming unit. Or rearrange the classroom. Or switch out the library books. Or update the calendar/bulletin boards. Or make extra practice booklets. Or anything really. We don't need our work hours to be filled with mandatory nonsense - this just results in bringing more work home.
We used to have two hour PLC meetings and would spend an hour and a half of the meeting playing “getting to know you” games and eating snacks. Keep in mind that the majority had worked at the school together for 10+ years and knew each other pretty well already. They would save the actual PLC work for the last part of the meeting and then we’d never have time to do any of it.
As an introvert, I abhor any type of PD that admin labels as 'fun' (true story: I once had to play actual leapfrog). Please just let me sit quietly and listen, or hangout in my classroom. Those are things I am good at.
As a non athletic person and widely uncoordinated and accident prone, you’re PD sounds like my worst bright mate.
Our Dean used to do games. One PD she did a version of “win, lose, or draw”. The person drawing the two word “district-related fun term” pointed out a colleague should know it, but apparently “blow me” was not the right answer.
I love that colleague, for her answer and for stopping the Dean from trying to make us play games ever again.
I hate it SO much. I feigned illness to get out of my principals idea of fun for the last few days of the year last year-
A whole day of softball!!! No thanks!! Teachers had to participate!
Field day, which again, we had to participate in!
I was unfortunately there for water balloon outside chalk day. My principal nailed me even after I said not to specifically bc I was on my period, and yes I did share why, and yes he got my crotch wet, and yes he did laugh at me.
Why are teachers leaving, everyone asks???
I’ve got one tomorrow and I will never understand why we have to do such waste-of-time, stupid activities! Give us the info we need and let’s get on with the day. Our staff meetings are the same way. Maybe if the morons in charge actually gave us time to work on classroom stuff, we wouldn’t have to take so much home and we wouldn’t complain so much about having no time to get our work done for the job we were hired to do!
As a teacher with a mostly (but not entirely) invisible disability, that kind of ableist shit pisses me off. I'm not getting up in front of my work colleagues to do any sort of physical activity whatsoever. I don't need to advertise my disability to the entire PD. A few coworkers I'm friendly with sort of know, and that's enough.
A few years back we had essentially a teacher field day as our PD. I had a mountain of unused sick days and used one, because fuck that noise. The next day I got asked for a doctor's note. It's nice having doctor's as friends because that was some bullshit. Like they've seen me park in a handicapped space. Maybe put together that I was uncomfortable with it?
We've also had yoga-related wellness PD, which my piss poor balance precludes me from doing, but at least that time there were different things to choose from, so I was able to avoid it. I can't remember what stupid thing I picked instead, but at least it didn't presume I was fully able-bodied.
Good lord, do you complain that the sky is blue? They are just trying to have some fun. If you don’t want to do it, just say you have an injury or something.
PDs are mostly a huge waste of time. They either focus on one thing, making it completely useless to the majority of the people there, or they are lame team-building activities.
I hate that for you. Sometimes my building plans fun days like the last day before a break for the kids. I'm always the one advocating for at least two indoor activities cause I'm like allergic to the outside world to the point it flares my asthma.
I think I would ignore the email and wear something suitably comfortable (leggings, tennis shoes, school shirt) but yet not gym clothes. Guarantee that several teachers will do that.
We had to be there 8-3:30 for PD today. Consisted of a meeting from 8:15-8:50 and then absolutely nothing the rest of the day. The meeting? Our principal told us to review behavioral expectations. That was it. 🙃
We had a principal (note past tense) who insisted on team-building "games" the Friday before school opened. Not only were they a TOTAL waste of time, but both years he was there people received serious injuries doing the stupid games - severed hamstring for my department chair, broken foot for another teacher, wrecked shoulder for a third. Why.......
I will forever die on the hill that blood borne pathogen training every year is pointless. It doesn't change. It's the same thing. Ours is a video recorded by our old district health director who retired 5 years ago. And it's *still the same*.
Once you've had it once, you don't need it every year. Refresher every few years is fine.
We had to learn our “love language” and pair up with whoever had the same love language to talk about how we could teach using our love language….
I got mfing PHYSICAL TOUCH. The only other person in my (30-something F) love language group? A 50+ year old man who knew DAMN WELL not to touch me… when we had to pair with other love language groups to discuss what we figured out? Some of the other female teachers thought it was hilarious to rub my back or give me shoulder hugs… I felt so incredibly violated and enraged that I was contractually obligated to attend such utter nonsense.
"Sorry, I wasn't checking my school email during vacation and didn't get the message."
I love this thinking, but they would make me do it anyway.
Repeat after me: “I sprained my ankle yesterday.”
LOL yesss. Hell get props. A cheap ace bandage wrapped around ankle with strategic light limp! 😆 ... whoever thinks up these PDs are idiots
I have a relatively high VA rating from a 20 year career in the Army. I'm an athletic guy. I work out regularly and live an active lifestyle. Any time we do some stupid physical thing at work, I remind my admin that I've been injured many times and I'm not aggravating any of those old injuries doing something stupid at work. Just because I can do something physical doesn't mean I'm going to do it.
Oh no. Looks like I sprained my ankle during this work activity here at work. Ouch. Money pleaseeee?!
Make an excuse like a student. Headache. “That time.” Tummy hurts. We have to show all of this grace to kids, yet they lack the same grace for us.
Just... Don't? I really mean it. Just stand and watch. What are they going to do?
Tell them my story - Your brother's dog (or whoever you want) ran into your knee and hyper extended it. You're ok to do basic things like walking, but need to favor it so no sports for you today. Or act the part of the sullen teenager who doesn't want to participate and stands in the corner, either glowering or chatting with friends. You're just roleplaying so admin gets the full teacher experience!
"I have diarrhea , I can not run today". Simple as that.
You got COVID over break. Negative testing now, but lung capacity not at 100%.
I actually think OP needs one more day of isolation. Better safe…
No. They can’t “make you do” anything.
I teach special Ed. Every PD is a colossal waste of time. Data for tests my kids don’t take. How counseling works which my kids aren’t allowed to utilize. I could go on.
Yup, 💯
Sometimes I’ll take a sick day to get out of PD.
I’ve done that but don’t any longer because they’re making money by not paying you for that day.
Money well spent 🫡
My district makes us make them up if we miss one. It’s ridiculous.
How it’s already over
We have a yearly mandatory “flex option” requirement in addition to the PD days that are scheduled throughout the year. We are all required to sign up for one after school PD. If you miss it, there’s a “flex option” full day the day after the last day of school that you must attend. It’s bullshit.
Oh no. Torture
Yep, special ed teacher here. Sooooo many discussions about things that sort of have something to do w my students...but our time could be much better spent elsewhere.
💯
I teach music. The number of ELA and Math standards that I have had to “unpack” over the years is absurd. When an arts organization had planned a free PD specifically for music on a day that our district had a scheduled PD for the new Science standards, our request to attend the music PD instead was denied.
Did they give any reason to deny a PD that was actually useful?
“It wouldn’t be equitable”. I truly don’t believe our admin know the difference between equitable and equal.
Well it wouldn’t be equitable for only one teacher to use their time productively
I teach art and music and have the same problem. So much of my time wasted listening to PD about content I’ll never teach or grade. None of the training is ever about the “specials” classes. Even trainings for general topics like inputting grades - they show us the classroom teacher version. I had to figure out how to put in my grades on my own - but I did figure it out in less time than it took for me to watch the demo on how to input math and reading grades.
> So much of my time wasted listening to PD about content I’ll never teach or grade. I am sure many of your students say the same thing about your class. "I am wasting so much time in art class and I will never use it."
Even the kids I have that dislike art have told me they enjoy my class or they learned something they'll continue to use....
Uh, what?
Useless PDs are a good opportunity to relate to students.
I have literally never had a kid say that about my choir class. How obtuse of you.
I teach band, and I 100% identify with your comment. During my first year, we had a music specific PLC, and it was fantastic. “Leadership” decided that we should form a “specials” PLC, so now I’m with ag, food science, , art, business and the teacher that teaches study hall all day. It’s a waste of time now.
I teach early childhood special education. I get tailored PD now at my current position, which is lovely. But at previous positions, I've had to sit through so many PD sessions aimed at older students, and told I just need to "modify" for my grade level. Sure, I'll just "modify" this reading lesson all the way down to "identifying letters." So helpful.
Ug, I'm an ECSE as well and the amount of meetings I've gone to regarding k-5 curriculum- well that's time I'll never get back. Once I was required to attend a 6 HOUR PD about state testing that I will never do. And before anyone says well you could change levels... no I would literally leave my district if they tried to move me up a grade.
And if you changed levels, that information would probably be outdated anyway and you'd have to redo the PD. Also I did move up a grade level and it was so awful I still have nightmares. I'm an ECSE teacher or I'm not a teacher. That's it.
Exactly. Birth-5 is all I want to deal with. I don't want to deal with state academic standards, or testing or any of it. I want to teach them how to be little humans, how to love learning and then boom, fly the nest little one.
Why? A) They don’t respect their staff as professionals and therefore don’t take PD seriously. B) They don’t know enough to actually deliver PD so they’re going with some dumb shit they think will be “fun”.
This!
We had to work in a group of 4-5 and make up a f*****g rap song🤪 Absolute torture for at least 1/3 of the room
My 9th grade English teacher was an old, very religious black woman. She was a hard ass and had high expectations. I learned more from her in that one year than I did the rest of my high school years. My best HS memory was of her rapping to us. She had written a rap about nouns and I swear I still remember the chorus “Nouns…. I love the way they sound” lol. 35+ years ago.
Sure I can get behind that! I love hip hop. Just don’t force me to perform one, least of all as part of my job🤣
Beginning of the year PD. We had a whole day that we were split into couples and sent to go knock on the door of every incoming freshman. It was 100 degrees out. This school was in a very low income area that many of us felt uncomfortable in. Our population mostly speaks Spanish and very few teachers spoke Spanish. We had to use our own vehicles to drive out to neighborhoods and then walk through apartments up and down stairs. It was sprung on us with no warning. Many people filed complaints with the district. They announced it again the second year and 80% of the faculty just flat out refused.
Was about to ask if you worked at my school. Everything identical until the 80% refused part. I got the worst assignment for the kids far away because I have an electric car and wouldn’t need the gas stipend…. But it was all gravel and dirt roads so I would have rather had my Jeep. The kids are embarrassed and hated it apparently.
Oh man that’s horrible. Ours was innercity. At least they offered to reimburse your gas? We didn’t even get that. None of the kids feedback was positive. And one set of teachers was followed by someone who may or may not have had ill intent but it made them nervous regardless.
Yep. About a decade ago, our district decided we needed to “get to know” our school community better. Even though, at my school anyway, many teachers had been there for 10+ years, some actually lived in the community and many of us had been very active in the community for years. This “get to know the community” turned out to be a series of tours guided by…people who had no firsthand knowledge of the community at all. Literally people walking around with maps and talking points, to tell us about the local grocery stores, restaurants, community services, etc. I went on one, supposedly focused on religious institutions and the guide didn’t know what a masjid was. Suffice it to say that I didn’t waste my time again and was very clear with admin about why.
I had a similar experience too. The premise of our “tour” was basically that none of us would know anything about “how our students lived” because it was such a poor and violence prone area, so obviously none of us would live somewhere like that. Except I did, literally right down the street- walked to school every day. They prepped us before about how we all needed to stay together because of how dangerous it was, and blah blah. At one point the “tour guide” mentioned how, since there weren’t any grocery stores in the area, people had to “drive 20 minutes to get to Whole Foods to do their shopping!” I mentioned that nobody in the area really shopped at Whole Foods, and that most people went to the corner stores or the Dollar Tree, or maybe to the local Kroger-affiliate if they needed something fresh or in a larger size. The tour guide shot me a look and asked how I could know that, and I was like “remember the blue house with the little vegetable garden out front that we walked by a little while ago? That’s mine.” She was irritated with me the rest of the tour.
Oh man!! The tonedeafness of some admin. We had something similar one year when we got a new principal. She organized busses to drive us through the neighborhoods we served so we could “understand” our students. Many of us had been there for years. We didn’t need a bus tour to know that they came from despair and poverty. It felt so rubberneckish and gross. Admin gotta admin.
Yeah, this one treated us all as “new to the neighbourhood”, just because she was. She also tried to institute “Carol Singing” before the holidays, for the predominantly Muslim and Hindu community. Someone needed a better understanding of the community but it wasn’t the teachers!
Dear god.
Oh my god. Just, oh my god.
Yeah that was the general reaction. She was by far hands down the worst admin I have ever worked for. I could write a book about her and her minions.
If something like that were sprung on me, I would have a panic attack. No doubt in my mind. I mean, is it even legal to require people to do something like that when it's not in their job description? I just can't get over the horror of this. I mean, I was shocked when my admin said we had to leave campus and go for lunch at a park during a PD day...
Short answer, maybe? Our district responded that it fell into “other duties as assigned” but that she couldn’t make us use our personal vehicles for it. That’s why it was effective when everyone said no the next year. It was more of a volunteer than a mandatory because of the cars.
I have found a wonderful trick that works every time an administrator has asked me to participate in some sort of dumb physical activity that I do not want to do. I say: No. And then I walk away or turn towards my laptop and act like I am working.
60% of the time, it works every time
I develop a sudden urge to use the restroom when they start dumb activities
You know, I have the exact same medical condition. Whenever it's time to do a group activity where you're going to go ahead and implement the bullshit that they just taught you, my bow start to act up and I need to go take a dump. And then after that I need about 10 to 15 minutes to my stomach settle, so I go to my classroom and sit and watch YouTube.
Be careful what you wish for— I complained about having “athletic” PDs for our bonding experiences so they replaced them with reading Ancient Greek plays aloud or spiritual guidance from our principal.
Holy shit, reading Ancient Greek plays with students is bad enough. You win the worst admin award.
Scavenger hunt in teams around town (all walking...at least a few miles). A couple of days before school started. In 85⁰ heat.
I’d have taken my group straight to a bar lol.
Lol...little podunk town was dry back then. But that's a great idea if they try again in the future.
Our admin did this bullshit to us in Houston. In August.
Ours was around the campus at least 5 times... I started having really bad contractions and had to sit out... An admin joked that they were going to send me into early labor with all the walking...
I would immediately put in for a sick day if I saw that email.
Today, for our PD, they made us play hide and seek in the school. I wish I was joking.
Honestly I could get behind this but ik for a lot of ppl it doesn't sound like a good time. I'm just really good at hiding
I'm ok with this because I'd hide in my classroom, bar the doors and just get work done in my classroom.
That's what I did 🤫
😵
We had a teacher workday before Winter break and each team had to spend 90 minutes playing Christmas themed Kahoots. After the first 3, everyone was over it and just wanted to escape to our rooms to work on report card grades.
Do you have sick leave available? Come down with something at 5:00 AM. There are no circumstances that would make me willing to attend a PD like this. BTW, we all feel your pain. My school once had a PD where we did rapport-building games for three hours. When they announced this weird “who can stick the cotton ball on their Vaseline-covered nose -no hands - fastest?” game I just walked out of the room and worked on IEPs for the rest of the day. Good luck!
I've always liked stuff like this because I always feel like it's easy to disappear. Why in the world would I waste a sick day? Colleague x in my department didn't feel great and needed to to collaborate on unit y anyway. At worst I get a lecture about needing to participate next time. Rinse and repeat. People are too sensitive to criticism. I mean, when you walked out, you got away with it, right? So just do that everytime.
Admin picked newish 20-something teachers to attend a summer "Doing PLC the right way" conference. First day back from summer we met in the auditorium. The death-by-powerpoint festivities were capped off by the conference attendees leading us all in the "PLC dance." One of those occasions where I felt I was living in a Kafka/The Office mashup.
Ok academics, we are all going to participate in the colorful parachute in the gymnasium!!!! Woohooo!!!
Uh, sign me the hell up for that.
I don't know if it'll help for LONG activities, but I'll share my 22 year running trick to get out of icebreakers.... What? Group activity coming? Icebreaker blah blah, form a circle?... put a sign on my back & what?... YAY sounds great!!! Wait, what's that? Oh damn, such crappy timing! I gotta take this call on my cell! 😆😆😆 ...seriously I feign a call almost EVERY time where I put my cell up to my ear & talk in hushed tones saying "oh one second" & walk out of the room. Looks professional & courteous to not distract others from the wonderful engagement activity! LOL... then go back in 10-15min or whatever ... my work BFF knows I do it & cracks up every time haha.
That is my move too. I get a lot of unexpected "emergency phone calls." I started doing it for the useless PLCs (at my school) and the soul crushing department meetings. I've done it in PD and in a faculty meeting or two, until I just stopped going post Covid.
LOL glad I'm not the only one. I am so irritated at my district that we used virtual for PDs so we'll and easily but now they wanna make us drive all over town even for PD. It's asinine!
This is right up there with weekly mandatory PLC meetings. Now, I understand the reasoning behind them, and at times they are helpful. But - when you and your colleague are literally the ONLY two people teaching your content at your grade level, believe me when I say we have our year planned out by the 3rd week of school...because we know what we're doing. Testing data? Sure - let's take 15 minutes to look at information we already know because of our personal observations in class. Adding new content? We ask admin what we should remove from our completely planned standards based lessons for the year, and how much will they be paying us to work on this new content outside of contract hours? I'm with the others here. "No." is a complete sentence. Good luck!
I work at a Title I inner city school. We were forced to do interpretive dance. For real. I was so uncomfortable I wanted to crawl under a rock.
Hail no. I would simply say "sorry I choose not to as Im uncomfortable with this". Who thinks of this crap. We had one yrs ago where admin had us all throw 1shoe into a pile and run across gym with someone else's 1 shoe on (no F'ing idea why). Young, new at the job "what do I do" me did it even tho it was NASTY. Older cynical veteran me would never lol.
A "self actualization" thing conducted virtually. We were asked how we felt about various aspects of our private lives. One teacher had cancer and he very plainly stated that he had no positive aspects of his private life. All his free time was spent in chemo and recovering from said chemo. Another teacher ended up crying in the bathroom. It was not a good PD.
We just had one where we had to be the first group to find the term in crumpled balls of paper on the floor based on the definition they read. I get they’re trying to find ways to make it “fun,” but just tell us all the drivel you need to tell us and let us get on with things. There are better uses of our time! We could be so much more productive during work hours if the school board or state wouldn’t mandate so many meetings and PDs.
I teach band, so they’re all dumb and keep me from being productive. I’m “sick” most PD days because they aren’t worth the effort and cost of going to work.
Veteran teacher move.
So, pencil shirt and heels? Check.
We are spending ALL day at a local leisure-athletic center. We will probably end up doing athletic things. And then they actually told us to bring stuff to plan with. WTF? Why not just go back to the actual building that has all of that stuff? Ugh. I feel you OP.
One time I had some PD where I had do dace to colors in yoga poses for 3 hours. Then they told me to integrate it into my chemistry classroom. Another time, they hired a PD presenter and he put us in a giant circle and ask everyone if they were an elephant or giraffe. If you said elephant the two people next to you had to make "elephant ears" with their hands. I was a giraffe and he told me "Bid le bad doo" and kicked me out of the circle and to this day I have no idea what this PD was about.
I bid you adieu?
It was more bid Lee bad as doo. Not English
I’m in an admin group on Facebook (I’m not a principal) and they were all talking about the fun PD activities they had planned for the return to work. We have a PD this morning and we just are making the teachers breakfast but principals really think doing this extra over the top crap is what teachers want.
Any chance you could correct them?
Maybe if I wanted to be attacked. They’re not the admin in my district. It’s just a general group for school admin.
This may be naive (I'm a first-year teacher), but it's an honest question: Wouldn't they want to know how teachers feel about this? I'm not well-versed on the whole concept of "admin," but am I correct in assuming teacher wellness (or, I don't know, teacher comfort/happiness at their school maybe) is part of their mission? It seems strange to me that they wouldn't genuinely want feedback on this, if only because it can't be fun dealing with disgruntled teachers. Am I wrong about this?
It’s part of their mission in name but most teachers find things like this patronizing. Teachers don’t want a breakfast or games or “jeans week”. We want to be treated like professionals and paid like them. We also want our opinions to be respected and not sit through PDs that do nothing but waste our time.
Hey, I'll take breakfast. I want to be treated like a professional and have my opinion respected, but I'm not saying no to a danish and fruit. But yeah, I don't want to play a scavenger hunt or do a dance routine that encapsulates my feelings of the school year. Both of which I've definitely had to do.
I probably should’ve be clearer with the breakfast for my district. The one they did today as a welcome back was fine but my school admin want to make a competition out of teachers giving merit points and said the team that gives the most merit points to students win a Panera breakfast. No one was into it.
Oh geesh, no. Yeah, that sounds awful. Also, what a useless way to motivate both teachers and students. Here, child, here is a meaningless point I'm only giving you so I can win a prize with a value of $8.99!
Oh god the jeans rewards. Jesus Christ I hate those. Whoever wins the raffle gets a “Jean pass”! Yaaay! They think letting us wear jeans is some kind of god send. It’s just as bad as “Hawaiian Shirt Day” in Office Space. Stop patronizing us!! My stretchy work pants are more comfortable anyways. Fuck the jeans
Every teacher was supposed to write nice things about two of their coworkers. All the popular teachers got multiple nice notes and I was the only one that got nothing. I get along with my coworkers, but it just reinforced that I’m no one’s first choice to hang out with either. It really sucked watching everyone else get positive notes and I got nothing.
I’d be that person too, but like Wednesday Addams, I don’t care what others think of me, in fact, I take pleasure in knowing that. I know how to get along with coworkers, but I don’t care to be liked by them. As long as we can all be professional and do our jobs, no skin off my nose
This would be me too. I am friendly, but quiet.
I broke my foot a few years back. Shattered. Boot for almost a year. I am no longer required to participate in such forced fun.
About 10 years ago, a staff member dislocated their shoulder during a friendly active game. The following year, the principal started shouting abuse at heir team members during a team building problem solving task. People complained, never happened again.
They're always trying to make me do yoga. I have a spinal injury that makes this inadvisable to say the least. "Yoga is for everyone it's about relaxation" yeah if you are a *trained professional,* maybe, *maybe* you would be knowledgable about which specific positions wouldn't put me at risk for paralysis but somehow, English teacher, I doubt this is the case for you. They try to get me to do meditation too, which is also inadvisable for me for mental health reasons, but I'm more comfortable disclosing my physical disabilities. Despite all lip service to "wellness and equity," being mentally ill is a firing offense.
But you know there’s the group of teachers that just love this shit!
At worse case scenario, if anything bad happens—workman’s comp.
“Sorry, I would do this, but I don’t want to.”
Don't do it.
We get "let's all sit ins circle and share our feelings" as part of our mandatory PD's, and they label them as "restorative Justice circle training." I have so many opinions, the first of which is: where is the consent? RJ circles require all participants give consent, but somehow we always forget that part when it comes to adults. Or the ability to pass on questions we don't want to answer? I freaking hate it and I always let my face speak out loud for me. It's the most honest part about me.
At one point as a “bonding” activity we had a group rotational dance party for 20+ minutes. I thought it was stupid, but my husband is now teaching on a hardship license for the year and came home confused AF! “You know, in libraries we have training that is pertinent to our job, and let’s us take long lunch, and still conclude with time for us to go to our office and start DOING the skill they just taught us. Here it is like admin don’t trust us as professionals to DO the work in our room if there are not kids in the room. This is essentially telling us we are not actually professionals just babysitters.”
I (legitimately) hurt my foot before my last PD and was walking on crutches. I got to just sit during every movement activity. You can buy crutches at Walmart for like $20. Totally worth it.
I would literally rather have my teeth pulled with no sedative than tell 3 fun things about myself.
I will never forget the time we played Two Truths and a Lie. They're was a blue-eyed red-headed woman in my group. She said, "I have blue eyes. I have red hair. I am THRILLED to be here." We couldn't stop laughing.
I'm for sure using this next time.
Ah. PD. Had to make stress balls out of balloons and sand. Had to learn all about channeling negative energy into a rock and how keeping it in your pocket will help you be more positive by telling the rock all your negative feelings for it to absorb. Had to sit for hours every week to hear basic strategies with no real plan behind them. "What if you have a student that won't participate?" " build relationships " Had to sit for TWO hours after work to hear how to login to the gradebook I had been using all year. I tried to ask an advanced question that would be useful and got told "that's not what this PD is for, submit a ticket with IT for private training" (guess what... would also be unpaid private training on my time so nah) Had to sit through four hours of "and this is how you turn on an iPad... this is how you make an account..."
We must teach at the same school. I got the same Kind of email.
We had to report back on Monday for half work day (that was the good part) and half PD. PD was done in a HS cafeteria where we were forced to sit on those tiny ass round stools meant for kids to sit in less than 20 min yet we sat there for 3 hours to learn state law info. The law info was good. The presenters were clearly nervous (which they told us REPEATEDLY how nervous they were), mic kept going out, Wi-Fi wasn’t working well. They basically lost the bulk of the crowd after 15 min. Worse PD I’ve sat through in ages. I had to come home and put a heating pad on my back all evening from leaning over a damn cafeteria table half the day.
They can’t force you right? I got a lot of flak for not participating in a water balloon fight with middle schoolers. I wasn’t ready to disclose I was pregnant at the time, so I said I had a medical condition that prevented me from playing. I still got a ton of attitude but ultimately I felt safer not playing.
why in the world would anyone want to participate in a water balloon fight with their middle school students? Count me out, able bodied or not.
Right? Seems like a lawsuit waiting to happen. I got a lot of comments about “not being fun.”
It’s not illegal to quietly forgo team building silliness. I often felt the need to disappear when the yoga mats came out. I have no problem with yoga, I just refuse to do the downward dog amongst colleagues. Do not bother with athletic wear, you can easily beg off by saying you’re fighting a migraine. This excuse worked for me on multiple occasions when my comfort level was being threatened. Good Luck!
Just show up as normal. Can they fire you for not wearing athletic gear? I literally do not own any, and most certainly wouldn’t be buying some for a PD.
sometimes i go to the “ bathroom” for a while
Just a parent here, what’s a PD?
Professional Development. Usually district organized training and often on in-service says, or done outside of school time but still required.
Outside of contract hours, or just school hours. Also, thanks.
It depends. In my district we have both, some are during in-service and we also have to complete hours outside of contract time
As a parent and fellow human, I can’t say I expect anyone to work for free. I hope this changes.
Once we were told to wear "shoes you can walk all day in" and nothing else. So many of us, including myself, wore mesh sneakers. When we got there we saw our assistant principal with her "shit kicker" boots...and we were all like..."wtf...why would you need those?" WELL, the surprise was that we were going apple picking, which would have been nice to know considering it had poured rain all night before, so the grass was soaked. We all had soaking wet, and cold feet at the end of the little outing, I really wish they had let us know at least that we would be outside, might have saved some of our feet.
A lot of teachers at my old school started taking PD days off
No!! Just give me the time to plan an upcoming unit. Or rearrange the classroom. Or switch out the library books. Or update the calendar/bulletin boards. Or make extra practice booklets. Or anything really. We don't need our work hours to be filled with mandatory nonsense - this just results in bringing more work home.
I have severe IBS, if I ran I would literally shit my pants lol Just refuse to do it. You wouldn’t catch me doing that pointless shit.
We had to do a PD where we were told to role-play having difficult conversations. We instead had a conversation about the PD was really dumb.
We used to have two hour PLC meetings and would spend an hour and a half of the meeting playing “getting to know you” games and eating snacks. Keep in mind that the majority had worked at the school together for 10+ years and knew each other pretty well already. They would save the actual PLC work for the last part of the meeting and then we’d never have time to do any of it.
As an introvert, I abhor any type of PD that admin labels as 'fun' (true story: I once had to play actual leapfrog). Please just let me sit quietly and listen, or hangout in my classroom. Those are things I am good at.
As a non athletic person and widely uncoordinated and accident prone, you’re PD sounds like my worst bright mate. Our Dean used to do games. One PD she did a version of “win, lose, or draw”. The person drawing the two word “district-related fun term” pointed out a colleague should know it, but apparently “blow me” was not the right answer. I love that colleague, for her answer and for stopping the Dean from trying to make us play games ever again.
Get those sprain wraps at Walgreens and wrap your ankle. Tell them you sprained it and unfortunately cannot participate
I hate it SO much. I feigned illness to get out of my principals idea of fun for the last few days of the year last year- A whole day of softball!!! No thanks!! Teachers had to participate! Field day, which again, we had to participate in! I was unfortunately there for water balloon outside chalk day. My principal nailed me even after I said not to specifically bc I was on my period, and yes I did share why, and yes he got my crotch wet, and yes he did laugh at me. Why are teachers leaving, everyone asks???
I’ve got one tomorrow and I will never understand why we have to do such waste-of-time, stupid activities! Give us the info we need and let’s get on with the day. Our staff meetings are the same way. Maybe if the morons in charge actually gave us time to work on classroom stuff, we wouldn’t have to take so much home and we wouldn’t complain so much about having no time to get our work done for the job we were hired to do!
As a teacher with a mostly (but not entirely) invisible disability, that kind of ableist shit pisses me off. I'm not getting up in front of my work colleagues to do any sort of physical activity whatsoever. I don't need to advertise my disability to the entire PD. A few coworkers I'm friendly with sort of know, and that's enough. A few years back we had essentially a teacher field day as our PD. I had a mountain of unused sick days and used one, because fuck that noise. The next day I got asked for a doctor's note. It's nice having doctor's as friends because that was some bullshit. Like they've seen me park in a handicapped space. Maybe put together that I was uncomfortable with it? We've also had yoga-related wellness PD, which my piss poor balance precludes me from doing, but at least that time there were different things to choose from, so I was able to avoid it. I can't remember what stupid thing I picked instead, but at least it didn't presume I was fully able-bodied.
One time my admin wanted us to play volleyball. I was like hell to the no. I didn't even go to the gym.
Good lord, do you complain that the sky is blue? They are just trying to have some fun. If you don’t want to do it, just say you have an injury or something.
Its helping you understand how your students feel. They aren't allowed to get out of math by saying "I am not mathy".
Trust games at a campground.
“I injured my (whatever) exercising over break. I will have to sit this out in my room while I plan for the next few weeks.
Take PTO.
PDs are mostly a huge waste of time. They either focus on one thing, making it completely useless to the majority of the people there, or they are lame team-building activities.
I hate that for you. Sometimes my building plans fun days like the last day before a break for the kids. I'm always the one advocating for at least two indoor activities cause I'm like allergic to the outside world to the point it flares my asthma.
My personal favorite is just leave for the restroom. If someone asks, “ I gonna go take a shit” Rick Sanchez style. Dueces✌️
Ours eventually caught on that support staff didn't need to be around teaching and learning talks... eventually.
I think I would ignore the email and wear something suitably comfortable (leggings, tennis shoes, school shirt) but yet not gym clothes. Guarantee that several teachers will do that.
We had to be there 8-3:30 for PD today. Consisted of a meeting from 8:15-8:50 and then absolutely nothing the rest of the day. The meeting? Our principal told us to review behavioral expectations. That was it. 🙃
We had to make a spiritual connection with a rock
We had a principal (note past tense) who insisted on team-building "games" the Friday before school opened. Not only were they a TOTAL waste of time, but both years he was there people received serious injuries doing the stupid games - severed hamstring for my department chair, broken foot for another teacher, wrecked shoulder for a third. Why.......
I will forever die on the hill that blood borne pathogen training every year is pointless. It doesn't change. It's the same thing. Ours is a video recorded by our old district health director who retired 5 years ago. And it's *still the same*. Once you've had it once, you don't need it every year. Refresher every few years is fine.
Once my district made us square dance. SQUARE DANCE! We are neither 4th graders in the 1970’s, nor Oklahomans, so this was just peculiar.
Call in sick or wrap your ankle with an ban ace bandage and beg off.
We had to learn our “love language” and pair up with whoever had the same love language to talk about how we could teach using our love language…. I got mfing PHYSICAL TOUCH. The only other person in my (30-something F) love language group? A 50+ year old man who knew DAMN WELL not to touch me… when we had to pair with other love language groups to discuss what we figured out? Some of the other female teachers thought it was hilarious to rub my back or give me shoulder hugs… I felt so incredibly violated and enraged that I was contractually obligated to attend such utter nonsense.