Effing whole day lecture/inset

[Ofthread]

Just come out of a whole day of some guy talking at me, a whole day, a day-long lecture. He could have said what he said in an hour. This is Inset, is this normal? It’s my first year teaching.

What were the post-its used for?

Did you at any point have to go and view another group’s post-its?

No, we didn't!

They were used for us to disucss and gather ideas on barriers to literacy. Common themes appeared across the room, therefore.

Twas very very good CPD.

I think most would agree that there is great value in professional development but that does not mean that all inset is good or worthwhile. I agree with Redcrayon that people get really irritated when inset is lazy and just time filling to tick a box - this sort of thing is insulting. I also sympathise with people who have to deliver it and perhaps aren't given enough time to prepare/plan/research it.

We also once had a behaviour guru. His advice started with the usual greet them at the door, have something ready on the desks for them to do etc - fair enough ... except that we didn't have our own classrooms, (apart from subject-specific rooms) we had to travel in between every lesson and the kids were invariably at the door before us climbing the walls so with the best will in the world, we couldn't achieve this hit the ground running start. This state of affairs had been imposed on us by an SLT who for the most part didn't teach and our protests had been ignored. You can imagine the rolled eyes at that one.

Another, more honest, behaviour expert declined to come in because our school didn't have an exit policy. Kids were supposed to stay in class no matter what - obviously if they swung from the lightshades it was because your lesson wasn't engaging enough.

I get depressed at the hours I have spent in inset in order to jump through the hoops of the day - brain gym anyone?

That's not to say I haven't experienced some good inset over the last thirty odd years - of course I have - but it has been far outweighed by time-wasting dross which has added to my burden and not helped the children or me at all.

Friend of mine recently promoted to SLT, over a coffee after work:

'Ah SHITE. I've just realised. I'm going to be the twat with a PowerPoint'

Rest of us: 'it's ok. We will behave & not heckle. Just please god no fucking big flip chart feedback'

Newly promoted friend: 'There is NOTHING I can do that won't make you all hate me, right?'

Us: 'well. What are you going to try to sell us?'

NPF: '...knowledge organisers?'

Us: 'yeah, harmless. Can we spend after lunch pretending to copy & paste stuff into KOs for our department?'

NPF: 'Deal'.

Total waste of time but harmless.

I want to find the person on school who is amazing at using VR in school & learn from them, & I'm amazing at a subject specific thing & could really do with the time to help colleagues with that.

But no. Post its & PowerPoints it is.