The dreaded faculty development/motivational speaker "workshop"

How many educators here have to sacrifice some class time to attend some b.s. workshop in which your school/district requires your attendance?

How often do these occur? In my district, we do these three times per academic year. Usually it's a staff development day, which means school ends early or classes don't meet.

It's also my experience that every different speaker or workshop sage who shows up to run these special programs usually don't know what in the heck they are talking about. For example, today classes ended at 12:40 so we could all convene for a faculty workshop in which a speaker pushed his book onto us, and then summarized the book for us in about 2 hours' time. He didn't tell us anything that anybody didn't already know, nor did he provide any evidence that his methods work. Not only that, but when asked what kind of data he has on effectiveness, he admitted that he had not even done an assessment.

Since I'm on the faculty/admin committee that hired him, I know his paycheck for the day was $3,500. The athletic director is also on this committee, and he said that money could go to buying new football helmets. In other words, the district shelled out a lot of money for a big waste of time.

Submitted February 19, 2020 at 04:55PM by NotTheKevinSmith https://ift.tt/37KXO6m