What happens in-service stays in-service

I'll be honest, I've written more than one post about the vapidity (vapidness?) of in-service days. Not because I care so much, but because people have an abiding curiosity about what teachers do on those mysterious days.

It's not like in-service time is automatically useless, because any moment of consciousness is potentially valuable, whatever you may be doing. But what I'm not sure is whether a lot of the in-service days I've been part of have brought any kind of incremental value beyond what I would have gained from going for a walk or reading the newspaper.

That's hard to measure, obviously, but the fact that I can't remember most of what we've done over the years is a clue. It's probably unfair of me to think about it this way; these days aren't being planned specifically for my benefit, so maybe I shouldn't expect too much out of them. I also need to be careful because people that I like and respect plan and execute these days, but just as they weren't designed for me personally, my antipathy isn't personal either. I've just lived through a lot of days-long programs, here and at other places I worked, that had some kind of idea behind them, but they are almost never successful in accomplishing much of anything.

This is true for a couple of reasons. First is that most people, even really smart, accomplished people, are lousy strategic thinkers. There is nothing innate about thinking strategically; it's not a talent, it's a skill. We are by nature tactical, reacting to small, immediate concerns rather than the larger picture. But to make any large-scale thing work, there needs to be a clear set of objectives and strategies behind it. And I've not been witness to a whole lot of that in my life.

Monday, and to a lesser extent Tuesday, were an better than most but not an exception. We spent most of the morning learning about a new LMS, short for learning management system. That means some sort of integrated gradebook, lesson planner, all round way of fostering communication between teachers and students for the most part, but for everybody in the school community more generally. Clearly it's useful to have one of these things, and I say that as someone who was appalled and amused to know that until not that long ago, we had no idea who was in school and who is not on a daily basis.

The last day we started with the union meeting. This is outside the scope of the in-service, and it's not really something I can or should discuss publicly. So is interesting though. After a short interlude of what they call department work, which for me consist mostly of throwing things in the garbage, we had our final organized activity. 

This activity was generated by the fact that our Board of Trustees is going to begin a strategic planning process. What I said above expresses my general opinion on this sort of thing, but it's possible that I'm just irritated that there is a strategic planning process going on that doesn't involve me. That's one of the more annoying symptoms of feeling like one is always the smartest person in the room.

Anyway, in pursuit of the strategic plan, we are moving from from an affirmative topic process rather than a problem-solving approach, and no, I'm not going to explain it. Today we did the first stage, which is referred to as the Discovery stage. I'm not sure that we actually discovered anything, to be honest. In fact many of us professed to be pretty burnt out on this sort of exercise, where we have to sit in groups and talk about what we appreciate about the school and people in it. It has a ring of familiarity to it that's more repetitive than comforting.

Nonetheless, we came up with our list, and as is the drill, brought it back to some common room where we and all the other groups pasted our list on the wall and read off of the highlights to the rest of the group. At this point there's some discussion about what a great community we are and then it ends. 

In this particular case, we were asked to remember our group numbers, 1 in my case, which I'm writing here so I'll remember it, so that we can reconvene in the same groups in the fall. That sounds fine with me, I like my group. Anyway, there are more pieces attached to this thing. I think there are seven stages of this or is that something else? Maybe 12 steps? Is that familiar? Maybe four; I don't now. Will be picking it back up in September.

After that, it was back up to the office, where I spent some time throwing away more papers and saying goodbye to a colleague who is off on a new adventure. In the course of cleaning, I uncovered a summary of the statements gathered from an in-service in the fall of 2014. Amazingly enough, it was almost identical to what we had just gone through. And you wonder why I'm sometimes a little bit jaded about this.

I truly believe that all of these exercises are well-meaning. But you know, my road to hell is paved with good intentions too. We'll see how this one turns out.

The last thing I did was offer to be part of a task force on discipline in the school, noted disciplinarian that I am. I'm not sure whether my general lack of structure makes me better or worse for this, but in any event I volunteered to be part of it. My big thing is that I think it's very difficult to follow the rules of conduct in the school when nobody knows what they are. So if I can get that point across and it somehow leads to there being a clear and well-defined code of conduct and and some sense of what the consequences are for violating that code, I'll consider it a success. Otherwise, it's not going to be particularly useful.

I made this known to my colleague who is running the task force. In the course of it, we had a discussion of dress code. This is been talked about in the school for a long time. Administrators always kept boxes with sweat pants and sweatshirts in their offices for people who are not appropriately attired. Clearly fashions of changed in the last 13 years, and the dress code has adapted, or perhaps is not adapted, to the point where it really doesn't exist at this point.

Part of the problem with having a dress code, is finding someone who is comfortable enforcing it. This was hard enough 10 years ago, but it's pretty much impossible now. Unlike my usual MO of just spouting off, I actually did a little bit of reading about this, and what I gather is that there are no good dress codes, that dress codes are inherently discriminatory against girls and physically mature girls in particular. That doesn't sound like a good start to me.

It'll be interesting to see where that all plays out, but I'm encouraged by the fact that it will play out in some way, instead of just being ignored. Because dress code is one of those things that if we pretend it's there and then don't do anything about it, it's worse than if there was nothing at all.

So on this chord, because it would be oversimplifying to say on this note, we've ended the period of in-service and it is now officially summer vacation for teachers. After my bike ride, I intend to start my summer vacation by taking a practice PSAT and throwing more stuff away, but at home.