MAC Week 1 Other - Beyond the Workday

Back when I was a kid, teacher workdays were exciting. Students saw it as a day off of school, and in our minds we imagined the teachers showing up in jeans and tube tops, drinking cocktails in the teachers' lounge, blaring awesome 80s tunes on the PA system. It was a nice delusion.

As a teacher, I've discovered workdays are much more dull than I once imagined. In fact, they actually involve "work". But the worst type of "work" one can experience on a teacher workday is the dreaded WORKSHOP (insert Alfred Hitchcock creepy bathroom opening music here). Ok, so not ALL workshops are bad, just 99% of them. They usually involve monotonous speakers, regurgitating information participants already know, Death by Powerpoint, mandatory sign-in sheets and limited lunch breaks. All attributes that pale in comparison to cocktails, tube tops and 80s tunes.

Fortunately, last week I had the pleasure of attending an awesomely awesome workshop by a Toby King from the Florida Inclusion Network. Sadly the term inclusion has become as taboo to teachers as merit pay, standardized testing and charter schools combined. Yeah, it's that bad. Now as one of those idealistic ones with less than 5 years under her belt, who still enjoys teaching a variety of students, even tough ones, and prides herself on the changes of an individual student both academically and socially, the idea wasn't so bad...but the "seasoned" teachers had really scared the bejesus out of me, having me thinking that inclusion meant being Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds.



Little did I know how much I would get out of it, and how my viewpoint would change. The presenter did an excellent job at forcing the participants to assume different roles and look at inclusion from someone else's shoes. What kind of classroom would you want for your child, or grandchild?

I was even more excited when the book we were gifted turned out to embody my entire Action Research project, and then some. Pearson Education's book, Building Inclusive Schools, gives a good action plan on how to change from the traditional classroom that actually educates a minimal number of students, to one in which all students can learn. I especially liked the underlying theme that EVERYONE HATES LECTURES!!! Seriously...if half your audience is sleeping or texting, it's time to switch up the game plan.

So, I walked away from this (all day) workshop last week feeling like I had just had the most productive teacher workday in 3 years. It was reaffirmed that YES, project-based learning is the way to engage learners and YES, teachers should act as coaches and facilitators for learning rather than regurgitators of information and YES, an inclusive classroom will sometimes look like organized chaos and YES, kids need to be taught soft skills and the desire to learn.

See, these are things I already knew, but now 25% of our faculty also knows them. So if we don't get anywhere now, then we should've just stuck with the margaritas and Wham! because the workshop was only worth it if we can take it beyond the workday.