Meetings and Icebreakers

 

My husband went down to the Walgreen’s this week and bought a planner. I know what that means. In his mind, summer is drawing to a close. The school year is looming. During the baseball game on tv he practiced songs he might want to teach his guitar students this year. In my mind we are smack dab in the middle of summer but, for teachers, they’re watching those sands falling through the hourglass.

Time is running out.

Over on Twitter, which may be reduced to nothing but an X any day now, teachers are already talking about back-to-school meetings: the dreaded “teachers’ meetings” that begin each school year.

Admins, please listen up:

What IF... We DIDN'T do icebreakers this year for pre-service? A lot of the adults I know absolutely hate them. We hate scavenger hunts. We hate word of the year. We hate minute-to-win-it. Two truths and a lie - ick. How about... just letting us meet our coworkers organically?

And then there’s this:

Admin: What makes y’all pack preplanning full of meetings? 

Y’all don’t think we need time in our classrooms?

If you are now or have ever been a teacher, you are probably groaning while reading these words. It often seems as though all you want to do is get yourself ready to teach but each day of the preparation period is set up with numerous unavoidable obstacles to prevent you from doing so. 

Just more evidence they do not really understand. I am not just cleaning and organizing I am planning, brainstorming procedures, reflecting on practices I used and would like to try.

One year my school preparation included a school shooting simulation. I was good for absolutely nothing after that.100 per cent do not recommend.

Teachers also approach that back-to-school period with thoughts of what parents in their school communities are concerned about. What upsets them? What are they pushing for? What is likely to be a source of dischord in their schools this year? 

This year in Howard County we have parents who are pleased by the change in school start times, others who are angry about the change in buses. We have the rumblings of discontent from some who want to censor acceptance for LGBTQ+ students and suppress teaching the truth about American History. All of those things may impact how parents talk about teachers and how they treat them.

It’s time to gird up your loins*, teachers. You know it’s coming. You prepare for it and steel yourself against it all at the same time. One year I received a back-to-school letter from the headmaster at a small Episcopal school which began:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;

Or close the wall up with our English dead!  Shakespeare, Henry V, Act III

It was both startling and somehow understandable.

Do teachers wake up one day in the summer and simply know? Do they scan the skies or sniff the air for a sign? I can’t explain it. One day it will be Phineas and Ferb Summer and the next day they’re sketching out room arrangements and scanning back-to-school sales. It takes time to get ready, and not just time for the physical things like purchasing supplies or setting up a classroom. 

It takes mental time. You have to psych yourself up, as we used to say. And in many cases you need to make that mental room for yourself while working other summer jobs. It can be hard to get a running start. It’s especially hard when you show up at school and face the scads of meetings and team buildings activities awaiting you. 

But that is the way it goes. It seems unlikely to change. It is part of the familiar and frustrating process. 

One last tweet:

I am no longer a teacher and seeing all these tweets about PD and back-to-school is giving me war flashbacks.

I, too, am no longer working as a teacher. I still feel that change in the atmosphere as my world leans towards the end of August. 

*As an idiom, the phrase gird your loins suggests you should prepare yourself mentally or physically for something that’s rather difficult or challenging. It’s like the old-timey version of buckle your seatbelts or brace yourselves, but with a lot more garment-related confusion involved. - - Grammarist