The best was one that had really good food when I was starving around 3:00p.m. because I had missed lunch. I don't remember what the topic was. I ate a lot. That was years ago and I still think fondly of the lady who hosted that workshop.
The worst was today. I think it was titled, "How To Have A Better Department." Something like that. It was fucktarded.
At my college, they're all super duper, especially the how to be a super duper teacher certificate program. The very best one was my last workshop, which happened to be online. I took the test without having to read the book or sit through a class.
The very worst one was a face to face workshop. The "teacher" had her back to the class for 2 and 1/2 hours while she READ 110 PowerPoint slides word for word. But the coffee was strong.
That is how I take the sexual harassment tutorial and assessment. I submit my answers, without taking the tutorial and print out my certificate of completion.
Best: at a lakeside resort, with lots of food Worst: at a lakeside resort, with lots of food, where I learned how entirely pointless the humanities are to the patent-generating machine that is our university
Best: sexual harassment training workshop every two years where the lawyers break all manner of confidentiality and spent two hours sharing odd cases/forms/outcomes of sexual harassment and lame jokes.
Worst: education "expert" brought in to teach us the importance of collaborative learning where the ENTIRE faculty body had to form small groups and make posters on how we can use collaboration in our classrooms, which we were then supposed to tack onto the wall so others could admire and get ideas. We sat in a circle and talked about sexual harassment training instead.
When I was in sessions like the latter (outside academia) I used to try to come up with the most creative, silly, outlandish answer I could think of. One time, when asked to design the optimal meeting space, I quickly sketched one that would only work in zero gravity. Funny, in my yearly performance evals I always got low marks for working well in groups, but very high marks for creativity. heh.
Worst ever? Not in academia but outside, where the big boss always chose to have overnight office workshops at a small mountain resort in West-by-God Virginny. The boss got a very nice large new room as did a few of the other managers. The rest of us got the moldy pest-infested tiny rooms with the broken down musty furniture. And then the bosses held a meeting that lasted from 7 pm until midnight "answering our questions" which basically meant droning on and on giving us the official line as to what our office would be doing in the next fiscal year. No meeting or offsite I ever had to suffer through in academia even came close to the hell of the West Virginia offsites....
The best would be one of the ones I can't remember.
The worst was one where a weird woman read us some xeroxed excerpt from something you'd read in 7th grade English. At one point the narrator describes a smell as something that reminded her of something about her grandmother. Then the presenter chick stopped reading and asked us to think of smells that reminded us of things. Then she didn't say anything for like seven minutes. THEN she said "Does anyone want to share?" There were fewer than 10 of us sitting around one table. It was painful. No one said anything for another three minutes and my original thought about smells that remind me of things was that Milk of Magnesia smells like menstrual blood, but I had to say something or this woman was not going to move along with the workshop, so I said that woodchips remind me of my father's workshop. Then she read two more sentences and asked us to think of a vision that reminds us of something. I wanted to shoot myself in the head.
When it was finally over, an old guy came over to talk to me about my father's workshop. My father doesn't have a workshop.
It would have been intriguing to see her reaction if you'd shared your original thought; perhaps it would have cured her of using that particular script. On the bright side, it sounds like you made the old guy's day with your fictional memory.
Best: probably the one on how to supervise graduate students, which I expceted to be BAD (a four meeting series) - excellent food, we ate whilst the leaders talked, and they basically told us all the legal stuff and regulations stuff we needed to know in simple terms, funny/scurrilous stories about things that had gone wrong in the past, and made sure we all knew where all the resources our students might need were. Then we kept a diary of meetings with our students for three months (which I do anyway), and got a certificate. My cohort did not have ONE person who asked stupid long-winded questions, or wanted to be teacher's pet, or had been made to come by their head of department and was determined to be disruptive, so we finished early every week. Free research time!
Worst: Leadership Training. Which I was sent on for lacking leadership skills. Evidence for my lack of skills? People think you will be cross if they don't meet the faculty deadlines for the module paperwork, and they find that stressful, so you're a bad leader... I learnt that my university is even worse at managing itself than I thought, and that most people on the course (who were there voluntarily) were so up themselves it was amazing they could walk. From the dataset available, I concluded that people who WANT power badly enough to take this particular leadership course were likely to be narcisistic, power-hungry petty dicatators in about 85% of cases in general, and in about 95% of cases if male (although there were naturally more males in the sample). Also, that the most arrogant ones were in subjects with titles like Something Studies or Activity/Noun Science, though perhaps that was subject-linked insecurity?
The one where our Uni's head of HR told us to take our noses out of our books, and then handed out a pamphlet with helpful tips like, "Take a drink of water from the water fountain. Really taste the water."
It reminds me of one professional development workshop, a bad one but not the worst, when the bubbleheaded, edu-babble specialist did acknowledge that many faculty found our students to be "unprepared" and "unmotivated." He therefore offered this remedy: "Don't use so many big words." Who the hell tells a bunch of college professors, "Don't use so many big words"?
During the worst, I was quite genuinely moved to tears. The principal of a local K-6 school was telling us how poverty stricken his students were, how the top priority was to get breakfast and lunch into them since they wouldn't get fed at home and they couldn't learn otherwise, and how violent crime in and around his school makes everything difficult. I wanted to scream, "HOW do you expect me to teach something as sophisticated as SCIENCE in THIS environment?!?!"
The best was one that had really good food when I was starving around 3:00p.m. because I had missed lunch. I don't remember what the topic was. I ate a lot. That was years ago and I still think fondly of the lady who hosted that workshop.
ReplyDeleteThe worst was today. I think it was titled, "How To Have A Better Department." Something like that. It was fucktarded.
At my college, they're all super duper, especially the how to be a super duper teacher certificate program. The very best one was my last workshop, which happened to be online. I took the test without having to read the book or sit through a class.
ReplyDeleteThe very worst one was a face to face workshop. The "teacher" had her back to the class for 2 and 1/2 hours while she READ 110 PowerPoint slides word for word. But the coffee was strong.
That is how I take the sexual harassment tutorial and assessment. I submit my answers, without taking the tutorial and print out my certificate of completion.
DeleteBest: at a lakeside resort, with lots of food
ReplyDeleteWorst: at a lakeside resort, with lots of food, where I learned how entirely pointless the humanities are to the patent-generating machine that is our university
Best: sexual harassment training workshop every two years where the lawyers break all manner of confidentiality and spent two hours sharing odd cases/forms/outcomes of sexual harassment and lame jokes.
ReplyDeleteWorst: education "expert" brought in to teach us the importance of collaborative learning where the ENTIRE faculty body had to form small groups and make posters on how we can use collaboration in our classrooms, which we were then supposed to tack onto the wall so others could admire and get ideas. We sat in a circle and talked about sexual harassment training instead.
When I was in sessions like the latter (outside academia) I used to try to come up with the most creative, silly, outlandish answer I could think of. One time, when asked to design the optimal meeting space, I quickly sketched one that would only work in zero gravity. Funny, in my yearly performance evals I always got low marks for working well in groups, but very high marks for creativity. heh.
DeleteYou know who doesn't collaborate? The entire faculty body! I like to think we'd do better in zero gravity.
DeleteThat's "micro-g," keedos. Gravity is everywhere: it's that, when in free-fall, things are weightless.
DeleteNo one in the American program will admit to having had sex in micro-g. I don't know about the Russian program.
Asking us to identify the "best" professional development workshop is sort of like asking us to identify the "best" sexually transmitted disease.
ReplyDeleteIn which case the answer to both is the clap.
Worst ever? Not in academia but outside, where the big boss always chose to have overnight office workshops at a small mountain resort in West-by-God Virginny. The boss got a very nice large new room as did a few of the other managers. The rest of us got the moldy pest-infested tiny rooms with the broken down musty furniture. And then the bosses held a meeting that lasted from 7 pm until midnight "answering our questions" which basically meant droning on and on giving us the official line as to what our office would be doing in the next fiscal year. No meeting or offsite I ever had to suffer through in academia even came close to the hell of the West Virginia offsites....
ReplyDeleteI've got four words for you:
ReplyDeleteState-mandated diversity training.
I'll let you guess which question I just answered there.
The worst so far: a presentation on "Appreciative Advising".
ReplyDeleteThe bile still rises in my throat when I recall it...
Worst... where the presenter insisted everyone get up and dance at the end of her presentation. I don't dance. And you're not gonna make me.
ReplyDeleteBest... Managing to avoid the sexual harassment training. FInally they've stopped asking me to attend.
About thirstys: Just for fun.
ReplyDeleteDoes this REALLY count as a thirsty, though? I mean it's called a thirsty, but is it REALLY?
DeleteMaybe, given Bubba's memories, it's a Hungry?
DeleteA1: None of them.
ReplyDeleteA2: All of them.
Fuck.
ReplyDeleteThe best would be one of the ones I can't remember.
ReplyDeleteThe worst was one where a weird woman read us some xeroxed excerpt from something you'd read in 7th grade English. At one point the narrator describes a smell as something that reminded her of something about her grandmother. Then the presenter chick stopped reading and asked us to think of smells that reminded us of things. Then she didn't say anything for like seven minutes. THEN she said "Does anyone want to share?" There were fewer than 10 of us sitting around one table. It was painful. No one said anything for another three minutes and my original thought about smells that remind me of things was that Milk of Magnesia smells like menstrual blood, but I had to say something or this woman was not going to move along with the workshop, so I said that woodchips remind me of my father's workshop. Then she read two more sentences and asked us to think of a vision that reminds us of something. I wanted to shoot myself in the head.
When it was finally over, an old guy came over to talk to me about my father's workshop. My father doesn't have a workshop.
PS this was for science teachers, not 7th grade English teachers.
DeleteIt would have been intriguing to see her reaction if you'd shared your original thought; perhaps it would have cured her of using that particular script. On the bright side, it sounds like you made the old guy's day with your fictional memory.
DeleteBest: probably the one on how to supervise graduate students, which I expceted to be BAD (a four meeting series) - excellent food, we ate whilst the leaders talked, and they basically told us all the legal stuff and regulations stuff we needed to know in simple terms, funny/scurrilous stories about things that had gone wrong in the past, and made sure we all knew where all the resources our students might need were. Then we kept a diary of meetings with our students for three months (which I do anyway), and got a certificate. My cohort did not have ONE person who asked stupid long-winded questions, or wanted to be teacher's pet, or had been made to come by their head of department and was determined to be disruptive, so we finished early every week. Free research time!
ReplyDeleteWorst: Leadership Training. Which I was sent on for lacking leadership skills. Evidence for my lack of skills? People think you will be cross if they don't meet the faculty deadlines for the module paperwork, and they find that stressful, so you're a bad leader... I learnt that my university is even worse at managing itself than I thought, and that most people on the course (who were there voluntarily) were so up themselves it was amazing they could walk. From the dataset available, I concluded that people who WANT power badly enough to take this particular leadership course were likely to be narcisistic, power-hungry petty dicatators in about 85% of cases in general, and in about 95% of cases if male (although there were naturally more males in the sample). Also, that the most arrogant ones were in subjects with titles like Something Studies or Activity/Noun Science, though perhaps that was subject-linked insecurity?
The one where our Uni's head of HR told us to take our noses out of our books, and then handed out a pamphlet with helpful tips like, "Take a drink of water from the water fountain. Really taste the water."
ReplyDeleteAt my university, "really tasting the water" is not a pleasant experience. Ugh.
DeleteIt reminds me of one professional development workshop, a bad one but not the worst, when the bubbleheaded, edu-babble specialist did acknowledge that many faculty found our students to be "unprepared" and "unmotivated." He therefore offered this remedy: "Don't use so many big words." Who the hell tells a bunch of college professors, "Don't use so many big words"?
DeleteDuring the worst, I was quite genuinely moved to tears. The principal of a local K-6 school was telling us how poverty stricken his students were, how the top priority was to get breakfast and lunch into them since they wouldn't get fed at home and they couldn't learn otherwise, and how violent crime in and around his school makes everything difficult. I wanted to scream, "HOW do you expect me to teach something as sophisticated as SCIENCE in THIS environment?!?!"
Anything involving role play is on the bad list...
ReplyDelete