Teacher training days

dizziblonde

Zazen999 wrote: »

I always point out to users of powerpoint that it was created by a geek that didn't like talking to people... so why people insist on using it for EVERY presentation I'll never know. It's a crutch for the unimaginative.

I detest it with a vengeance. Nowadays, as i work for myself and from home I don't often have to endure it.

It's always a source of mild bemusement that teachers in particular get constantly reminded about not over-talking, attention spans wandering, keep input sessions short and to the point... and then inset day rolls around... and we get shoved in a classroom and talked at from 9am till 4pm (with break for the mandatory "sort bits of paper into piles" activity so the person delivering the course has "used kinasthetic learning").

I hate loathe and despise PowerPoint - my oh works for a company that are obsessed with how many pointless graphs they can put into a presentation - that's their defining measure of success.

hieveryone

Not sure how it is everywhere else but our 'inset' days are mostly in the school holidays as far as possible, so for example, the kids summer holidays run from 26th June - 17th August, but the teachers are back in on 13th and 14th August, so no difference made to the children whatsoever.

Zazen999

dizziblonde wrote: »

It's always a source of mild bemusement that teachers in particular get constantly reminded about not over-talking, attention spans wandering, keep input sessions short and to the point... and then inset day rolls around... and we get shoved in a classroom and talked at from 9am till 4pm (with break for the mandatory "sort bits of paper into piles" activity so the person delivering the course has "used kinasthetic learning").

I hate loathe and despise PowerPoint - my oh works for a company that are obsessed with how many pointless graphs they can put into a presentation - that's their defining measure of success.

Perhaps we should start a facebook group. I don't need therapy anymore but it sounds like there are alot out there that do!

brazilianwax

dizziblonde wrote: »

Believe me, having sat through some of the most hideously boring Inset days known to man - I'd rather have the kids in than suffer death by powerpoint on the latest silly initiative that will be out the window in 6 months.

I always love teacher bashing - as someone explained earlier, the number of days a school has to open to pupils for is set by Government, as are the number of Inset days we have to endure. The number of hours of directed time teachers have and are paid for (as someone explained - we just have our pay split over the 12 months) are also set by Government, as is what we get paid... want to try to turn this into a Government-bashing thread instead?

We have them because we HAVE to, not because a bunch of evil teachers decide to sit around fancying a day off and work out how we can best inconvenience parents by making them actually have to have their children around. Most teachers have kids and have to arrange childcare for their children when we have these days, and most teachers flipping hate these days as well - like I say, death by PowerPoint usually (creators of PowerPoint - how I'd love to murder you with a paperclip).

I'm actually getting incredibly sick of the teacher bashing threads on this site at the moment. You care about your children yet you repeatedly beat the people trying to do their best by them over the head - seems stupid to me. Yet people seem to expect teachers to be on call 24-7, work for free for the joy of the job (newsflash - most of us love the work with kids, hate the other 5 hours of paperwork a day and are getting mightily sick of being sworn at and insulted by parents like we're faced with) and there's a group in society who pretty much seem to want to absolve all parental responsibility onto schools to bring their kids up, while all the while coming down to the school and threatening teachers when they have to discipline their child.

When I worked full-time (I do supply now as I value my health, wellbeing and family life more than a day's wages), I was in school before 8 (had colleagues who got there at 6.45), worked solidly till 5.30 there, went home and then worked till 10pm, would work at least 4 days of a half-term holiday, at least one day on a weekend, and be in school for probably a week of the 6 week's holidays in addition to all the planning for the following term. I spent hundreds of pounds of my own money on things for the classroom, pencils when the stationery budget inevitably ran out by March, prizes and rewards, Xmas presents for the class/Creme Eggs at Easter... and all I got in return, apart from the smiles from the kids and buzz when they clicked onto a concept you were teaching, were gobfulls of abuse from parents when I kept their child in at break for threatening another kid with a pair of scissors, or to see the head sworn at for excluding a kid who brought a stanley knife into school. Then you get to come home to be bashed in the media constantly. Those teacher training adverts don't promise the truth - a nervous breakdown before you're 30 was what I had in store for me - just from the strain of trying to do the best by the kids (I would lay in bed at night working out how I could protect the class from the child with behavioural difficulties who'd go nuts and try to physically harm them), and juggle everything else.

My old head, who was a remarkable woman I'd have gone to the ends of the earth for because I admire her so much, would spend the day getting the living daylights kicked out of her by children going off on one, yet walk into the staffroom, bruised black and blue, with a smile on her face, before returning to her office ready to be sworn at by a stream of parents at hometime. She took so much flack to protect her staff - and she shouldn't have had to. That's the reality of teaching these days - just add to it by bashing away.

Without a doubt that is the best post I've ever read on MSE :T

cheapscate

what I find annoying is that all the schools have different inset days - I have to juggle inset days for 3 different schools and it's a nightmare - I live in a unitary authority and don't see why the LEA can't insist on the schools having the same inset days.

dizziblonde

hieveryone wrote: »

Not sure how it is everywhere else but our 'inset' days are mostly in the school holidays as far as possible, so for example, the kids summer holidays run from 26th June - 17th August, but the teachers are back in on 13th and 14th August, so no difference made to the children whatsoever.

Lots of schools work on the logic that parents have childcare arrangements in place for the holidays so by tacking Insets onto the beginning or end of them so the holidays appear longer, parents just arrange childcare for the additional days and don't notice the kids are actually off for 6 weeks and 2 days or whatever. I like it when schools do that, but other schools randomly stick a Monday or a Friday in in the middle of term which causes a lot more confusion for people trying to cover one day's childcare, but I guess it's linked to when you can get people if you've got external bods coming in etc, or if it's moderation and things that needs to be done at certain times of year.

Only drawback of adding them to holidays is if the heating's controlled by the council it's not fun sitting on a hard chair in a school with no heating all day watching Powerpoints! (There's an episode of Teachers where they're fiddling with the school heating and it's soooo true to life it still makes me laugh to this day)

brazilianwax

cheapscate wrote: »

what I find annoying is that all the schools have different inset days - I have to juggle inset days for 3 different schools and it's a nightmare - I live in a unitary authority and don't see why the LEA can't insist on the schools having the same inset days.

Because if someone from the LEA is 'facilitating' or providing training they can't be in 3 places at the same time?

cheapscate

brazilianwax wrote: »

Because if someone from the LEA is 'facilitating' or providing training they can't be in 3 places at the same time?

they could have a central training venue - it's not rocket science.

peachyprice

dizziblonde wrote: »

, but other schools randomly stick a Monday or a Friday in in the middle of term which causes a lot more confusion for people trying to cover one day's childcare,

I wish, the school my sons go to pick random Thursdays, Tuesdays, any old day really not tacked onto anything, thank goodness they're old enough to not need childcare

barnaby-bear

cheapscate wrote: »

they could have a central training venue - it's not rocket science.

So they should do the training just on one day - so the trainers etc. only work on one day (easy to find people who want a job one day a week?) and this training centre should be 5 times the size it needs to be - so everyone can fit in on that one day, with 5 times the number of trainers (all only working one day a week) to have the appropriate different sessions for different age groups etc...... why don't you send your kids all to the same school and class (or are they different ages? )