Today I attended a professional development workshop at my placement school. It was the first "real" PD I've ever attended (not including the NYSEC conference I went to last October...), and it left me feeling even more confused about the world of education.
There is something to be said about the discrepancy between what we learn in the program (education should be holistic and joyful!) and what I've seen in the classroom/school (education should be wrapped in a neat little box!). And what bothers me about this discrepancy is that I've always felt that education should be about the outside of the box.
On the one hand, it's great that so many schools are trying to support teaching staff by giving them strategies to try out in their classrooms - strategies that will give them more "control" (an issue I have anyway, as I feel control in any situation is an illusion) or show them a new way to approach direct/collaborative/guided instruction or what have you. On the other, though, I'm bothered by the idea that education is being boxed up. It's like these PD people are saying, "Let's make education nice and neat and pretty, and we'll tie it off with a shiny big bow!" when education is really messy and nonlinear and as far from shiny as you can get.
It's a slippery business, trying to box in something that's completely huge and amorphous and wild. It's slippery because people are slippery. You can't package the school day into a nice, neat package and call it a day! You have a mixed bag of students. You have a mixed bag of home lives, socio-economic issues, day-to-day adolescent crap, teachers-with-tempers, every single day of the school year. There's no telling how those things are going to interact, and trying to put them all under one thumb or one label or one mandated method for doing things is not going to solve anyone's problems.
We don't all fit one label. When will the higher ups realize this...?!
