Make That Six Times

Thank goodness I have spring break this week, or I don't think I could have put up with the idiocy of what I had to endure on Friday. I'm going to tell you a happy little story about why my school district annoys me a smidge. It's called My School Won't Let Me Work.

My School Won't Let Me Work
By Pigs

Friday was a professional development day. Upon moving to Texas, I learned that this is in no way to be construed as the same thing as a Teacher Workday, which I was accustomed to in NC. Apparently, workdays don't exist in my district, because that's what you're supposed to use your off contract time for. (report cards, conferences, etc.) SO.
It was planned that all the teachers from my school would go to another school and we would attend a variety of "sessions" presented by fellow teachers. We were asked if we wanted to present. I offered to present, since I'd rather talk than listen, and never heard back until about a week ago when my principal asked me what I was presenting. I told her that I was not in fact presenting, as she never replied to my email. She acted miffed and slightly disgruntled, but I was unsure how else to respond. I cannot pull together a presentation in a week.
It turns out, due to lack of planning and communication (can you imagine??), that the administrators did not have enough sessions to serve us all. In fact, they had no sessions in the subjects that I teach.
Confusion emerged...what are we going to do with these language arts teachers? We don't have a session to put them in to take up their time! If we don't make them attend something, they might go back to the school and work! *gasp!* Clearly, we couldn't have that, so they scheduled a language arts presenter to come speak to us for the entire day. A language arts presenter who I had seen five times before. Did you catch that? Five times. One three day workshop, one day long workshop, and one personal visit to my school in which she spent the entire day with my team and me.
It seems that my district only has one language arts contact in the entire state of Texas, so they just call her again and again. I can hardly blame her for responding, as she's making a wad of cash everytime they call, but me? I've seen her! FIVE TIMES! Same slides, same stories, same lessons, same everything.
So that's how I spent my day before spring break. Sneaking work under the table and making lesson plans on the sly, lest I get caught by one of the administrators patrolling the teachers to make sure that we were paying attention and not working. Just like high school. 'Cause we're professionals like that.