A rant from the BFF.

I’ve heard a lot about bad Professional Developments lately.  I mean a lot. I’ve had friends coming out saying they learned nothing, that it was a waste of time and even that they had both suicidal and homicidal thoughts.  Here is a rant from my bff (first spoken of here) (my thoughts to follow.)

Haha the rant I was planning on posting?

6:14 PM Like the whole thing?

6:17 PM Attention all educators! Listen up.We don’t live in a perfect, wonderful dreamland. We live in a grimy, bleak reality. We do not have brilliant, self-motivated students. We have lazy asses who want to be spoon fed shortcuts, and who’d rather amputate a limb than sit in class. We do not have infinite time to implement amazing programs. We have (approx.) 50 min. a day to drink from the fire hose that is district programs and “quick fixes.” Standardized assessments aren’t perfect tests that mirror exactly how you teach. 

Get the hell over it. The minute you stop bitching about “what a terrible question that was,” or “that’s nice and all, but I don’t have the time,” or “well, the students should know this,” and get your ass to work, you might see some results from your students.

I’m not sure you are aware, but the USDOE could give 2 shits about all of your pissing and moaning. As far as they are concerned it is your job, let me say that again: JOB, to make sure that the students are achieving and developing deep understanding of concepts, including ones tested by “bad” questions.

If you can’t find effective ways to get students to achieve at the necessary level, or are unwilling to change the way you teach to accommodate unideal students, then get the hell out. You are making the profession look bad and more importantly, you are making me look bad. Besides, I’m sure there are people who are willing to take your jobs (Don’t believe me? Go check out Southern California.)

Okay, back to me.

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First off, not all our students are lazy but he’s right some are.

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He’s totally right about the perfection of standardized tests being that they aren’t.

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He’s also right about another thing which he doesn’t state so much but its what I got from talking to him.  He spent a fair amount of time arguing today with people who said the questions on the test were bad or to hard.  They were upset because they were teaching their kids rules and he wanted them to teach their kids to think.  He wanted them to work harder and to do better and, well, in the words of people from southern california, suck less.

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The question was something like this, “You are going on a road trip and it takes you four hours to get somewhere 250 miles away. What is the dependent and what is the independent variable?”

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The correct answer is that the independent variable is the distance because you decided where you are going then the time is dependent on that. (“No, Soph,” he told me, “you are an aberration other people don’t just decide to drive for 5 hours and then have vacation there.” He thinks I’m weird can’t figure out why)

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BUT one of the multiple choice answers was time because time is always independent. Which in this case is proven false except a ton of teachers teach their students this.  They say, “Remember time is always independent.” except when it’s not.

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So the teachers were yelling at this district PD (only 36% of students got this question) about how this question was BAD and Ryan was just trying to say, “Maybe it’s not the question. maybe it’s you.”

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