Can I have my time back please?
Although I have been working for just over thirty years (gosh I am old), I have never had the pleasure of working in “corporate America”. Aside from selling women’s shoes when I was very young, I only have experience working in children’s homes and schools. So I’m not sure if this will translate to other fields. I guess I’ll have to check out the comments to see if this annoyance is universal or unique to my area of expertise.
The annoyance: Presentations based on the ground breaking ideas of brilliant experts.
Oh please brilliant experts, tell us more of your cutting edge, groundbreaking ideas!
(The tinfoil hat is a dead giveaway that this is going to be truly special.)
It seems that every year I have taught, there has been a new initiative that is even more brilliant than the last. Sometimes, if you are very lucky, you might get access to two or three in the same year!
Luckily for me, this was one of those multiple earth shattering initiatives years.
Recently, I was lucky enough to sit in the most uncomfortable folding chair ever designed while a consultant regaled us with his brilliance. After exactly three minutes, I realized why the chairs were so freaking uncomfortable. This was no accident. It was excellent planning. If any of the audience were sitting comfortably, they would have fallen asleep after the third super cool Prezi slide.
The presenter made a huge mistake here: comfortable chairs.
The expert began by telling a story about Demosthenes, the greatest orator of ancient Greece. Apparently, he would prepare for his speeches by shouting at the ocean.
Fair enough. I’m pretty much on my way there. I shout at the clouds all the time.
After 47 more examples of people throughout history preparing for tasks in different ways, the genius began to explain his core concept.
The Learning Zone
"The learning zone?!" OMG! I am a teacher. I love the idea of my kids learning... in an entire zone! This is going to be the greatest thing ever!
I took out my pad of paper and prepared to take notes on this life-changing training.
According to one of the leading experts in the field, Eduardo Briceno, the learning zone is “where we can develop our expertise, skills and experience, and be able to make mistakes to learn from in a low stakes environment.”
Hmmmm that sounded familiar.
Apparently, the more time students (or anyone) spend in the learning zone, the better they will do when they are in the performance zone.
Over the next hour, we heard more examples, participated in small group activities at our tables, watched some videos and played a review game.
We spent two hours learning that properly practicing a skill, makes you better at that skill.
Holy Shit!
What a breakthrough!
Practice makes you better at something!
Why has everyone been holding back this information for the past 18 years?! I could have helped kids so much more if I had only known the life changing effects of practicing things that you want to get better at. Somebody really needs to start spreading the word about this!
Wow! This expert was worth every penny.
Oh wait. I mean that not only did this doofus steal 120 minutes of my life, he also stole a ton of money from my district.
Literally everyone in the world, not named Allen Iverson, already knows this.
(Hopefully everyone also knows other things that Iverson doesn’t… like don’t spend $250 million when you only have $200 million.)
Back to the educational guru.
Somehow, he duped my school into paying him for a two hour training on the importance of practice. All he had to do was change the word “practice” to “the learning zone” and then laugh all the way to the bank.
There have been times I have been stuck in line at the DMV for two hours. The only way I could pass the time was by reading and re-reading all of the public service informational posters that lined the office walls. That was a far more productive use of my time than this “training”.
Here are some other things that were more productive uses of my 120 minutes than listening to this time burglar:
- Watching get rich quick infomercials
- Listening to teenagers’ drama
- Looking at an ex’s Facebook page
- Looking up divorce lawyers after trolling my ex's Facebook page
- Arguing about daylight savings time
- Washing my car while it is raining
- Listening to Jazz Fusion
- Talking to that guy on the corner with the sandwich board that says “The end is near”
- Going purse shopping with my wife
- Listening to a time share sales pitch
- Sitting on a runway while they try to figure out how to take off even though 8 geese have made a nest on the end of the runway
- Watching paint dry
- Talking to my in-laws (This is a lie. Even I have my limits.)
By the way, here are my notes from that earth shattering bombshell dropped on us that day.
So does this only happen in the educational world?
Have you ever been to a presentation so mind-numbingly dumb that you begged to get your two hours back after it were complete... or at least have your mind erased so you never have to think about it again?
By the way, if you think this was amusing, you should check out @comedyopenmic and @punchline.
how wet is the water, did he touch on the ph level making it feel wetter? Or did he just say you might get wet when water hits you?
Thanks for the plug. Greatly appreciate helping to get the word out.
Thank you for running it. We need more funny content here.
Wish I could get back some of my lost time then I would not have fucked up and I would not now be checking out my EX's FB page mutli times per day LOL.. also if I could get time back I would be rich... but we can not get time back but only the time we have left here on earth so I will start making the best of the time I do have..
30 years working and on Steemit? thats amazing ;)
LOL! I really hope 28 years from now I can say that and it be the truth!
blockchains never die ;)
yes, this happens everywhere. But, I would say that it probably happens more in anything that is paid by taxpayers. If someone can rename an idea and sell it to the Government it is a gold mine. Schools and other Public institutions are slow to react, change and spend very inefficiently. They make the greatest targets for a Guru. I learned long ago that there is no such thing as a guru. And now, by your notes on the the subject I can now refer to them as good practicers. By the way. I tested the water here and it is indeed wet. I hadn't known that so helping me out means you wasted less time than you thought there. You're a giver!!
You're welcome! Do you think I can qualify as a water guru?
well since I don't believe in Gurus I would say no but a person who has practiced with water yes. I can't believe we are talking about Pratkis. (that's how Iverson said it.) Funniest thing about that whole Iverson thing when it went down was that he couldn't even say it right. But, I will defend him because if you remember correctly, he fell to the ground on every drive he ever made. He was the toughest player to ever play because he was so small. I wouldn't have made him practice like the team insisted he did. He didn't need it.
It is easy to spend money when it is someone elses money.
Ha. As a fellow teacher, although based in the UK, I have had my time wasted at so many of these over the years, it may be a worldwide phenomenon!
Brain Gym!
Learning styles!
Current ones involve feeding back using different coloured pens.
As a result, we developed various games to play, in these meetings, my favourite was Bulls**t Bingo:
Each participant picks 5 -10 "Educational" buzz words/phrases that are in common usage.
Whenever the meeting lead drops one of these key phrases, cross it off, the winner is the first to cross off all of their words.
It's also good for staff meetings.
Other favourites include inserting lyrics from pop songs into all of our responses to the trainer, for bonus points, they should all be from the same band.
I think I could get a full summer back, if I added up all of my wasted hours from this sort of thing.
Oh I love Buzz Word Bingo! We haven't done it in a while but we should bring it back.
"Somehow, he duped my school into paying him for a two hour training on the importance of practice."
I always wonder how these people manage to do it. Not bringing any valuable information to the table and yet keep on making money and fooling people to pay for their worthless regurgitated shit. I am amazed.
It's all in the presentation. Just need to really sell it and back it up with common sense data.
OMG!!!! You are preaching to the choir with me!!! Every year it’s something new. I love when the Ministry of Education shoves jargon down our throughts about this new technique and that new strategy. The best part is in so many cases it is the same rethiric being presented in a different package with a new name. We have been on a roller coaster over the past 6 years between “We need to improve Language skills” to”Our math scores are falling” and back and forth. I have talked to teachers I work with who have told me that a presentation we just had is the same thing they weee doing 20 years ago. 🤦🏻♂️ I fully believe there is room for professional growth in any job but sometimes it seems like we are cats chasing our own tails.
Love the Allen Iverson reference!!! PRACTICE??? Lol
Exactly! The problem is that there is nothing so new and innovative that can fill multiple hours of a paid consultant. There are many smaller tweaks that can be made that make a huge difference, but you can't charge a district thousands of dollars for 15 minutes worth of very useful tips. So we end up learning those on our own and then wasting time listening to philosophy for hours.
I don't mean this to be coarse, but this is something of a short response medium. I know it is difficult, but I can't understand why teachers let lawyers, bureaucrats, and other well paid time wasters who are not educators have so much pull when it comes to education.
Being pretty politically involved, It seems that it is just the government trying to raise the next generation in a way that will match their beliefs. I dont want to single out democrats because republicans have made the same mistakes, but right now it seems like a whole lot of very liberal agendas are making their way to the students. public schools operate on federal funds, and therefore to get those funds, schools have to follow more and more regulations, taking power away from the parents and the teachers, who obviously know whats best for their kids. (btw this is the reason I'm homeschooled ;-))
LOL. You are preaching to the choir. There is not a single person with any educational experience on any of the school boards in my area. It's insane. The people in charge of millions of dollars have 0 combined minutes of experience in a classroom.
As soon as someone comes up with a better way to ensure all students (regardless of economic status, race, country of origin, and geographic location) can have access to a quality education I will jump on board whole heartedly.
I actually think steemit and steem can be a huge part of this change.
Until then I just have to try and do the best I can for the kids I work with every day.
Berilah mereka cinta dan bila siswa nya sudah 17tahun ke atas ajari mereka bagai mengari seorang sahabat, maaf saya masih baru disini jadi belum begitu mengerti
We have this cool thing at my work i have dubed "5 day memos" . Our idiot managers put out memos to tell us to change the way we are doing stuff ( it is ussually the most asinine way you could do it) so we will do it the "new " way and then the next week we get a memo saying we are doing it all wrong and thst we ned to do it a "new new" way. Which just so happens to be the original way.
Oh that is hilarious (not to live through I'm sure).
Yep, but you know what they say. What doesn't kill you gives you a dark sense of humor and unhealthy coping methods.
I think that most so call experts are just very skilled when talking and selling regular information, but nothing more.
A lot of online courses are just that, regular people with good enough (not master like) knowledge of a subject, presenting it in a "interesting" way and there you go, you can call yourself an "expert".
I didn't knew schools could fall for things like this, but that only mean his strategy is working.
What did the other teachers say about the guy?
Several of us talked to the administration about it. I don't think he will be back. It was so ridiculous that you either had to laugh or cry. Most of us chose to laugh... and do our best to make sure he won't be back.