Paul's Infrequently Updated Blog

Today was the annual ESU #13 Winter Conference. ESU stands for Educational Services Unit and the one that covers the Panhandle of Nebraska was the 13th to be established in the state.

Every February, they hold numerous workshops for teachers and other educational professionals in the Gering/Scottsbluff area to support our “professional development.” Every December, we get asked which of these workshops would we like to attend and, unfortunately, this year I forgot to tell my Principal my preference, so he put me in what he thought would be the best workshop for  me.

Until this year, all we had to do was fill out a sheet telling the administration what workshop we wanted to go on, but, this year, we had to go see the Principal and “request” the workshop of our choice. I say request because several teachers told me that when they went to the office with their requested workshop the Principal insisted on them attending something else instead.

So I go to the workshop at the Gering Civic Center to see what the presenter, Carl “Energizer” Olsen, has to say. Anyone who decides to use the term “Energizer” as a nickname immediately raises a red flag for me. Sure enough this guy did not fail to disappoint.

Almost from the beginning, I got the feeling he was trying to sell me something from the collection of products he had set out on tables in the room. He also spent much of his presentation demonstrating his products claiming they could be used in the classroom to attract and maintain students’ attention.

I had several issues with the “Energizer.” First off, I found his presentation to be dull. I find most workshops to be dull so, to be honest, it may well be just me and I will try not to hold that against him. The next issue concerned where he spent most of his career in public education. For most of his time in education, he was a Middle School Guidance Councilor and, while that means he would have had regular contact with students, it also means that he had little to no experience of actually teaching and managing a classroom. I do not like people who have had no real experience of teaching in a high school setting telling me the best ways of how to teach.

The other issue I had with the “Energizer” is that a lot of his products would not be used safely in a classroom. Some of his products create magic tricks and one involved the use of fire. I can just imagine the trouble a teacher would get into if they used such things at our school.

The final issue involved the afternoon break. The main reason for taking this break was not so we could stretch our legs and maybe grab some coffee, but so that the “Enerqizer” could try and sell some of his products to the people present.

At the end of the day, I asked one of my Social Studies colleagues what he thought of the presentation and he said that it had been one of the worst in his 25 years of teaching. I think that pretty much says it all.

Today was the first day back at school after the Christmas break. There were no students today, just teachers and staff getting ready for the new semester. I did not really have all that much to do today. I made sure I had all my work done before I went on Christmas break. I did have to check and verify my grades with the school’s registrar, but after that I pretty much had the day to myself.

This semester things should be a little easier. Because the I.R. class is only a semester long, I have already taught one semester which means at least for the first two units I already have the material ready to teach the class. As I get into the second half, I will have to spend more time planning and creating materials because I did not get to teach that stuff the first semester. I still think everything will be okay and, by next school year, I will be all set.

When I got home today, I got greeted by D’Argo. He was outside and came to the front to come see me. We ended up going in the house together. On Saturday, he will be going to the Vets again for his rabies booster shot. He does need this because I have seen him recently playing with some of the other local kitties. I want to make sure he is protected from any diseases they might be carrying.

Today was the end of the semester at school. We are now on Christmas vacation until January 4th when teachers go back to school and then the students return on the 5th.

Semester has ended okay for me. I managed to get through the first semester of International Relations, although I have discovered that the curriculum that I wrote for it is way too long. At some point, it will have to be cut back. Right now, the I.R. curriculum I wrote is six units long and I only managed to get about two and a half done. Next semester, I plan on speeding things up and also making some cuts to the I.R. curriculum. That way I will be able to cover more of what needs to be covered. I am not too worried about the I.R. because I now know I have plenty to cover and don’t have to worry about running out of things to do. In fact, I actually really have too much material to cover for a semester long course.

The other two classes are doing well. I did manage to get the first two units of World Geography completed. This may not sound like much, but unit one of the World Geography curriculum covers a lot of material. All the other units are much smaller in the second semester if I spend three weeks on units three through seven I would still have about three weeks left to spare at the end of the year. This will not happen so the geography is pretty much taking care of itself.

As for my third class, U.S. History, I have had to speed things up a little this year. I would have liked to have been finished with both the Great Depression and the New Deal by Christmas, but, in the end, I only got done with the Great Depression. This is still a huge improvement on this time last year when I had only just been done with World War One. I guess I can learn from this and, if I teach U.S. History next school year, I can make sure I am done with the New Deal by Christmas.

Now that the Christmas vacation is here I do not have to worry about school for a few weeks. I made sure all my grades were done by today so I don’t have to worry about having to go to school over the Christmas break to work on grades. I think, overall, I am using my time more effectively at school. I now get most of my grading and a lot of my lesson planning done at school. That, of course, means I do not take very much work home or spend very much time working on creating assignments and PowerPoints at home. While some of that is still necessary, I am gradually  reducing the amount of work I have to do at home. If I have the same subjects to teach next year that should mean a lot less work for me since I will already have most of the materials available at hand. I have no doubt I will make some supplementary materials, but the core materials will be already be in place.

I guess I can now look forward to almost two weeks of no school and no school work!

At Gering High School, teachers do, of course, have to have observations in order for the administration to see how teachers are doing in class. I have never been a fan of these observations because I do not think they accurately show how a teacher is teaching in class. What I sometimes think administrators fail to realize is that the very presence of a Principal or Assistant Principal in the classroom completely changes the dynamic of the room. I do think they have their place, but I do not think they are an accurate and fair way of assessing how well a teacher teaches (and neither are standardized tests for that matter).

At Gering, Probationary Teachers have to have two formal observations each year, one in the fall and and in the spring. Once you gain tenure, you are only observed every third year, but still have to fill out lots of paperwork to show how you are achieving professional development and meeting professional development goals (this is true in most school districts).

In addition to all this paperwork and formal observations we have, here at Gering we have what is known as the “informal walk-through” (I got one of these in my email yesterday). Every so often, one of the administrators will walk into your room to see what is going on. I honestly do not see the point of this and especially the little form I get in my email saying how I was doing. The issue I have about this is that teachers are supposed to be professionals, yet I always have this feeling that administrators don’t think teachers are doing their jobs properly.

I do wonder if this is the way other people are treated in other professions. After all, teachers have to have the minimum of a bachelors degree to teach and many, like myself, have a master’s degree too. I would think that, after all this education, a person would be trusted to do the job they have been entrusted to do with a certain level of independence. Unfortunately, in U.S. education this appears not to be so and teachers have very little control over what they teach and also in regards to school policy. I have worked in other school districts that often treated the teachers as little more than hired help. If this is the way teachers are to be treated, then you have to wonder why you need someone with a college degree teaching students.

A few weeks back, I wrote about how the Gering football team had won the last game of their regular season and had qualified for the play-offs. Gering won their first play-off game and so yesterday played another play-off game. This, of course, meant another half-day of school was lost, which is more time that students are not in a classroom.

What I found particularly offensive about these play-off games, is that the administration gave us the choice of staying at school and working or going to the game for which we would have to pay an entrance fee. You may ask what is the problem, well I feel that teachers and staff should be able to go to the game for free. In this case, those teachers that had passes to regular season games could not use them for play-off games.

I certainly was not going to pay to watch a game, so I opted to stay at school. It was not that big of a deal since, even if the game had been available to me for free, I think I would have chosen to stay at school. The point here is that these games and events should be open to school district teachers and staff for free. The reason for this is that the administration always harps on about how important it is for tacters to show there support to students. I might be a bit more inclined to support the Gering sporting event if the events were open to staff members for free.

Of course, the Activities Department has a program whereby a teacher can sign up to participate in at least two school sponsored events and, in return, get an activities pass to most school events. The issue here is that most sporting events I have no interest in and actually find boring. I think the problem is that the big sports are “football” and basketball, which I don’t understand and don’t care to understand. So why would I want to go to events I have no interest in?