Ben Guest Assignment: Free write.
The school year hasn't even started yet, but already I've been given a glimpse of the administrative problems all the second years so willingly talk at length about. Rumors of professional development workshops began circulating among those teaching at North Panola less than a week before we were expected to show up for the first scheduled meeting. I use the term rumors since many of us, maybe even most of us, never received an official notification. Seeking out secondhand information pertaining to a series of mandatory meetings that had not been announced was not something I had envisioned. Between calling the school and talking to other Teacher Corps members, I obtained all sorts of conflicting information regarding the workshops; the only way to sort it all out was to just show up the first day.
We sat, or should I say suffered, through three days of seminars on literacy that I can only presume were geared towards either a much younger or a much less sophisticated audience. They were borderline painful, and I took very little from the experience. I remember the chairs being extremely uncomfortable and I remember the speaker pronouncing some very common words in a strikingly unique manner, but aside from that I don't really remember much else. The objective, if one could actually be derived, was to demonstrate various methods that could be used in the classroom to enhance the reading ability of our students. This objective however, was not met in the least.
Outlining the problem of student illiteracy greatly overshadowed possible solutions, but the majority of our time spent there was wasted with impertinent anecdotes from the speaker and a continuous series of trivial complaints from the audience of teachers. The lectures were completely ineffective, but an absurd amount of breaks combined with a very generous compensation made them tolerable.
I plan meticulously and promptness has always been a defining characteristic of mine; I see these two qualities clashing with the attitudes of the administration I'm going to be working with for the next two years. I've come to the realization that Mississippi time runs much differently than what I'm used to, and I'm just going to have to deal with that or go crazy trying.
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