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Bullshit
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11 thoughts on “Bullshit”
Me: Bullshit. You keep saying that we need these activities “to keep the children interested”. Isn’t that what you’re really looking for, engagement? Then come into my room and look for engagement. If it isn’t there, then we can talk about activities to achieve it.
Right, that is the weirdest part about what those administrators seem to all be looking for these days. With personalized comprehension based instruction, we provide deep engagement, but it isn’t packaged in the box they want to see, so they correct us. They are fools.
They are stupid. I mean that in the nicest way possible, but anyone with half of a brain would see that they are engaged. Engaged, as Robert said equals involved. How smart do you really have to be to figure this out?
Those that are not stupid are convincing themselves that because following and endorsing this system is a job requirement, that it really works. That is delusional. And dishonest.
If you don’t believe in it, don’t understand it, or don’t like it, but do it to keep your job, you could at the very least say, sorry, I think you’re doing fine, but I have to check off boxes and write up a report. I need to feed my family. Sorry we are in this bullshit together.
But I stand by my experience that many (maybe even most, but not all) administrators were never good teachers and they weren’t good teachers because they didn’t GET IT. They still don’t.
BTW, my first Danielson-based observation is in about a week. I’ll let you all know how it goes. And if I’m asked to provide a translated transcript or do a cultural lesson in English. (that was the suggestion) No, I won’t do that, sorry admins. I also offered to have a student sit next to the admin and translate quietly. That idea was rejected straight away by several admins. “What if you prepare the student ahead of time to make you look good?” Oh. My.
with love,
Laurie
Clarification of first sentences: “They are stupid. (Admins who say things like that)I mean that in the nicest way possible, but anyone with half of a brain would see that they (students) are engaged.”
“What if you prepare the student ahead of time to make you look good?” Oh. My.
REALLY??? This sentence made me want to throw up. Not kidding. This is the core of the issue. Institutionalized bullshit fueled by institutionalized mistrust and suspicion.
We are currently in the beginning stages of a “creating a top-notch curriculum.” I can already tell this is going to be a serious increase in the level of bullshit. NOt to mention bullshit work, documentation, compliance, blah blah blah.
The first step was to respond to the ITSE standards for technology. We have to provide “bullshit” for each students’ digital portfolio. Whaaaat? When I read carefully through all the standards and commented in a completely non-snarky way, “I’m not trying to be contrarian, but for a level 1-2 second language class there is nothing relevant here.” I got all kinds of suggestions: “They can record themselves speaking a dialogue.” “You could have them write a song and record themselves performing it!” Stuff like that shows me nobody gets what CI is about. I knew this, but now I really get it.
I know I can find legit ways to contribute to this. I have yet to use Jim Tripp’s awesome Garageband idea, so that is something that’s actually very useful. But this will have to be for homework and not in class. I know there are probably lots more, but I want to devote my energy into the human interaction. I am NOT going to add more tech to my 45 min class periods. The stuff at school rarely works, internet goes down, my classroom is to small to fit a lot of the stuff like projector / document camera, etc. so I rely on a flat screen TV on a cart, hooked up to my laptop. It works most of the time. I cannot see adding even 5 mins of farting around with stuff that doesn’t work, taking away from the CI flow that I am trying desperately to create.
Then there is curriculum mapping! Hip hip hooray! Ok, that was snarky. I guess for that I will just pick stuff out of whatever stories and novels we work with and fit it into the different columns. Sigh.
Good luck Laurie! I know you will rock this. And I hope your observers have clear eyes so they can see what’s actually happening!
…fueled by institutionalized mistrust and suspicion…
This is the most pronounced quality in the top down system. Somehow, we who think about teaching languages all the time, often to a fault, are somehow on the same playing field with people who don’t know shit about language education, and never think about it, but have power.
It’s aggressive. And worse, it’s aggressive at the level of the institution so that anybody can say any kind of meaningless statement based on stupidity but, if they are in a position of judging, it sticks.
Even within world language teaching this kind of judging of others occurs. Helena Curtain on one occasion CRUSHED Carol Gaab verbally and walked away. Helena, representing her own “institution”, crushed a person doing real work on behalf of kids.
It goes on and on. We judge each other. Strong and wonderful teachers like skip, no less, get judged in completely false terms, based purely on ignorance. People doing actual work to make real changes in a broken system are attacked. It’s a wonder we don’t all just walk away from this bullshit.
We can’t do this ourselves. There is too much judgement going on. It’s a joke, really. How in the hell do we even go into work on Mondays? How do we even walk into all that mistrust and suspicion?
We have to have the confidence of heroes. We can’t let attacks by dumb asses get to us. We just can’t. Luckily, our confidence is high, because what we are bringing to language education, in spite of those who don’t understand, is heroic.
What we are bringing to the tomblike French and Spanish and German and other language classrooms of the past*, those programs that were just PATHETIC in spite of all these district idiots, is heroic. It is. It’s heroic.
*including the remarkable action by certain of us here in our community who have gone into the tomb that the Latin language slept in for so long, and are pulling it out and breathing fresh life into it.
I cannot fathom that you have had to suffer this fool and this observation. Our profession has hit an all-time low. Did anyone else, besides you, hear this “comment” about you possibly preparing a student ahead of time? If so, this is, by legal definition, slanderous. I am appalled.
I’ve been told a few times that I need “transitions” aka activities
I sent the coordinator of curriculum in the district our meeting notes from last week’s articulation meeting. I happened to mention wanting to do a pilot program next year and couched it in the thought that we could collect data from it. I guess I said that so it would seem appealingly.
I just got an email from her and she’s not crying BULLSHIT. She wants to meet with me to discuss what a pilot program to collect data would look like. Ugh. I wish I wouldn’t have said data but what I meant was just to see if those kids will do any better on tests than those of my colleagues. Foot in mouth, perhaps? Putting myself in an awkward position, perhaps? But I do that everyday with tprs….
Any advice what to respond?
No, it’s a good thing that you mentioned data. But you need Diana on this one. She has been throwing data pillows at adminstrators in our district for about eight years now and winning those pillow fights.
Diana has the data thing right. I will copy and paste what you wrote above into an email and ask her to contact you and I will also talk to her tomorrow about this. I don’t usually volunteer her time but this is important.
Hey thanks. I appreciate her help and yours, of course.