Thank the Lord for Good In-Services

In my short (some would say extremely short) teaching career, I can say with some confidence that there are some times when we have specific "training times" which should be labeled as "blocks of wasted time I could be spent doing anything else that would be more worthwhile for myself, my students, and the whole population of educated people in general." These times are typically called in-service opportunities. You don't often have a choice of whether or not to attend these in-service times. There are a few instances, however which should not hold the same connotations as the phrase "in-service." In fact, if I had my way, we would call them something like "Theft Sessions," or "How to Be A Thief." I would call these as such because you come out of them with a truckload of ideas for your classroom that you put no effort into whatsoever, yet the presenter expects and frankly would be offended if you didn't use them as such. (By the way, if we've got any other terms for the dreaded "in-service" or "Theft Sessions", I would love to hear them)

Today's in-service was one of those Theft Sessions. I was a little wary going in, because the lady that spoke to us is a huge Harry Wong fan, who was teaching before Harry Wong came out with all his stuff. However, this means that she met us as close to the door as possible and had us introduce ourselves and shake hands. This also meant that there was some group work time planned. Each of these things are issues with me, because I'm the type of person that likes to hang back and check out my surroundings before I am forced to join in with everyone else. It's how I've survived in such good shape over the past 28 years. Back to topic, I was also wary of this lady because she was a theater person and we were in a very small space. Now don't get me wrong, I love theater people. I have several friends who work in the theater world, but at times if you get too close to them (in a physical sense, not emotional), they tend to be incredibly overbearing, because normally they are trying to project a character all the way to the back of the theater. This works in a theater setting, not so much in a classroom with 15-20 people in it. So here's this lady who is larger than life, but to the trained eye of a performer, you can see she is also playing a part, and it makes you distrust her a little bit because you know she's only playing a character and not being genuine.

As the day wore on, however, the initial facade faded some, and she was very able to connect with our small band (no pun intended) of non-math and non-science teachers. She was a fantastic reader, she read us several of her own compositions which were delightful to listen to. She also was a presenter who had taught for almost 40 years in the classroom, so at the end of the day, she was really able to give us practical uses for almost every conceivable subject area. It was very refreshing because as a music teacher, I feel we are somewhat left out in the cold in these mandatory meetings because the focus is on the classroom teacher and on how to arrange desks and check student written work and other things of this nature which are very difficult to adapt to the music classroom setting. For those who don't realize why this is an issue, let's cover these two very shortly: written assignments are basically not done in band or choir, because your final portfolio of work is available for the public to hear and you actually invite parents and community members to come and judge. Arranging desks (which we don't have) is also very difficult, because children are generally seated according to what instrument they play or what voice part they sing. Now I realize that I can adapt that somewhat, and I have in the past, but it took a lot of thinking time and work on my own to come to a satisfactory conclusion that worked for me, and it had nothing to do with what I was told during one of these in-services.

This presenter was not like that at all, she made a very conscious effort to include the fine arts classes, and seemed to try very hard to validate us as an actual subject which is another fight we have to fight sometimes, not so much with teachers although there are a few, but more with students who don't realize they can actually fail band if they don't do the assignments. Anyway, back to this presenter. She also helped me gather ideas for my upcoming general music classes this next year as far as classroom managers and keeping students on task when outside of my room, but doing work for my class. It was very nice.

One last thing about this presenter. She had all of us write on an index card an adjective we would use to describe the types of teachers or teaching we would like to do this year. Take some guesses on my word, and I'll post it in the next blog. The hint I'll give you is it has to do with one of Compass' core values. The exercise we did with it involved mixing all the cards up and redistributing them, then having the "students" match the cards back up with their owners. It was a wonderful way to get to know each teacher a little bit deeper, and at the end of the exercise, we could have written all of the words up on the board and had a fantastic list of words to help inspire us throughout the year. (That's my mini-theft session, if you can use it, take it! One thief to another!)

The last thing I'll say in this blog has to do with the picture that I chose to attach to it. The reason I chose it is because it's the hokey, never gonna put it up within a 50 yard circumference of my classroom kind of one-line, no thought went into it kind of dribble we get fed at an in-service that the presenter thinks is very profound and that makes me sick. Now, I realize that my mother who teaches 5th grade is probably going to read this and before she gets to this part be looking elsewhere on the Internet trying to find it so she can either put it up in her room at school or at the house, but that's because that sort of thing will work for her and I hope that if she ever did an in-service, excuse me, theft session, she would never use this thing to close her time. It would be something truly profound, practical, and easily adaptable to any subject............ You won't find any of that here, so just keep on walking, but thanks for reading all of the post. I'm sure there will be more tomorrow!