Your Teacher PD, Part I

Hi there. Welcome to your Monday Teacher Professional Development “Opportunity”. You are all here today not because you are dedicated educators (you are, but we only acknowledge it through Hallmark-card-level smarmy sayings and group clapping sessions, not actual pay or time), or because you asked for it - you are here because we said so. I mean, because it’s good for you!

I’m a smartly-dressed educational consultant. Let me explain what makes me different from all of you veteran teachers, who have been working tirelessly for a collective 1,345 years in education through hundreds of budget cuts, educational trends and fads, and demoralizing erosion of social norms. You all have taken thousands of hours of professional development and read dozens of books about the current educational fashions (your district paid for the books, stop whining). You are paid for 40 hours a week, yet you work 60 and sometimes 80. And summers? Ha. You plan and plan, as the days speed by outside, and your own children raise themselves in the yard. They used to stare in at you through the kitchen window as you worked at the table, eyes big with hope and anticipation that you could perhaps join them outside. But that hope’s glow faded with time, and their eyes glazed over with the death of that anticipation, and now they’re 14 or 15 and no longer want to spend time with you. That time is gone. You will never get it back. There is no power nor science nor god that can bring it back. You have killed your childrens’ childhood with your devotion to the practice. The darkness takes you all in the end, and you all will die alone.

But I make twice the money you do! And I get paid travel! And I once taught Advanced Water Bottle Management for three years in Martha’s Vineyard’s best private school. That’s just one of the reasons your district has decided that you should be trapped in uncomfortable chairs in a poorly-ventilated room for eight hours, listening to me drone on. Oh, and if you ever, ever dare to lecture at your students the way I do, your body will be found in a field somewhere, chewed on by dogs.

But the main reason you should trust me is my expertise in the most essential of skills to an Educational Consultant (I’m going start capitalizing it, because I’m That Important): fluency in Educationalese.

Educationalese is a very difficult language, and spoken only by the most advanced practitioners of the ancient art and science of Taurus Puppis, which is definitely Latin for “educational excellence” and nothing else. What makes Educationalese unique is its ability to make the speaker feel so much smarter than everyone around them, while simply restating very common and easy-to-grasp concepts that even a Golden Retriever with moderate brain damage could explain. Let me give you a few clarifying examples of some grammar and vocabulary.

Teach: oh, you thought you understood what this word means and how it’s used just because you have been “teaching” for thirty years? Laughable. You have been doing it wrong the whole time, of course. Oh, the actual teaching is not something I know anything about, but I do know that you need to use “teach” differently.

Guess what? It’s a noun now.

Yep. That’s a huge part of Educationalese. We nounify verbs. We verbify nouns. We generally approach language with the same contempt for conventions that you are showing for me. Educationalese is not built for comprehension. It’s the first language specifically designed to obscure communication of ideas, because here’s the secret: the more you hide the simple, stupid, insipid, idiotic, juvenile, basic ideas that you have under a thick blanket of mangled grammar and misued vocabulary, the smarter people think you are. Well, not normal people, but fellow speakers of Educationalese, and guess who loves that language? Your district administration. Check and mate, and another $4,000 consulting fee for an eight hour session!

So yeah. Now it’s not even a “learning” when you’re talking about a chunk of information that you impart to students - and I know even “a learning” was a difficult pill to swallow, but we shoved it down your choking throats long enough that you’ve even started saying it on your own. No, it’s a “teach” now. Here are some (sickening) uses:

A First Teach: the first time you encounter a piece of information. The nice thing about this phrasing is that it implies no effort shown by students - one of the most important parts of most educational initiatives. “The first time you encounter information” or even the archaic “the intro lesson” is far too descriptive. “The First Teach” is perfect, because it puts the burden on the teacher to engage, inform, inspire, and ensure the impartation of knowledge on the teacher, the only person qualified to perform a teach.

Wondering: we would never want you to leave a meeting with an administrator actually knowing what they felt about you. If they thought you did something poorly, they couldn’t just just say that! That would make if far too easy for you to correct the problem quickly, or to refute what they’re saying with research. Instead, leaving you in that grey area of ambiguous judgment will keep you scared, and a scared teacher is a compliant teacher. “I have a wondering…” is one of the most chilling ways to open a conversation with a stressed-out educator. You’ll always have a wondering about your employment status this way!

Universal Design for Learning: now, this one seems straightforward at first. “It must mean making learning universally accessible, right?” you say, simple in your naiveté.

I see you’ve fallen for my little trap.

Universal Design for Learning (or UDL - you should never underestimate my love of acronyms!) is a complex, 19-step, years-long-to-master system of checks, balances, systems, subsystems, frameworks, learnings and teaches (remember, it’s a noun), and scaffolds that you personally will never, ever master. Even if you try to make analogies between its constituent parts to methods you already employ, I’ll tilt my head, make an “ehhhhh” sound like a dying Blue heron, and then rephrase what you just said in a completely incomprehensible way.

And if you dare say that it’s just good teaching… oooh, that really kills me. How dare you say that my system is not a completely new and original way of looking at education. It’s totally different from Flipped Classrooms, Differentiation, Inclusive Teaching, 21st Century Skills/Classrooms, Scaffolding, SIOP, STEAM-focused, Brain-Based Education…

Oh man, it’s time for our five minute coffee and bathroom break. Run out and empty and them subsequently fill your bladders, because we have another 7 hours of this coming!

TO BE CONTINUED…