ANSWER: Because apparently I'm stupid.
I am informed that an important day of curriculum at the end
of this year will be forfeited for me and my subject-specific cohorts to attend
a day of professional development to which we have been "invited"
(summonsed). Unable to give up any more
of my teaching time, I react to this "invitation" with a sudden spike
to my blood pressure and a loss of control over my verbal faculties as the
words Fuck that shit fly out of my
mouth. Normally it would be okay for me
to say Fuck that shit after school
hours, which it is, except that I am sitting in a curriculum meeting with my
colleagues and my immediate (low on the totem pole but significantly more
important than am I) superior.
I discover that this incredible, unparalleled, special event
is to be done on an afternoon of the last full week of school, during which I
will lose a planning period that everyone else who is attending will still get
in the morning. Not one to throw the
word contract around, I decide to
anyway since I have already said Fuck
that shit. The only thing I have to
lose at this point is my job
The resulting brouhaha resolves itself when I am offered,
albeit half-heartedly, a chance to opt out.
Well, I guess no one expects me to actually choose what's behind door
number two. I opt out so fast and
furiously that my finger actually bruises when I hit "send." My classes, my curriculum, and my students
are more important than test-driving another flash-in-the-pan writing program
that's gone the way of all the other writing programs before it: John Collins (with whom I worked before he
was JOHN COLLINS!!!!! when he was just john collins), Write Source, Six Traits,
and now, Writing With Colors.
I decide since I'm going to miss the presentation that I should
probably do a little research. What I
discover is that this program is something that has been around for decades and
just keeps getting recycled as more people claim to discover it and stick a
flag on it. I click on link after link
after link, going up the gamut until I hit the most recent Internet entry: MY BOSS (and two of his compadres). Not the Low-Totem Boss and not the High-Totem
Boss (which is really ass-backward since it's customary to have the most
significant person at the bottom of the totem, is it not?) but the
Almost-High-Totem Boss.
So it seems that my day of teaching is being interrupted for
a colleague's research project, a patent-pending endeavor, a future one-man
road show, an overpaid consultant's version of a wet dream.
And therein lies the rub (uhhhh…. no pun intended).
The added beauty of it all is that if this blog entry sees
the light of day, I can lose my job over it for bitching. Apparently when MY writing is colorful, it's
not such a great thing. I guess this
realization calls for an additional if anti-climactic Fuck this shit, too.
What in the hell is the matter with people? I mean truly -- WTF. Who hires himself and his friends as a paid
professional consulting team to deliver a regurgitated program as their own at
the end of a school year so we cannot possibly make any use of it
whatsoever? Are we just their guinea
pigs for their first trial run? And why
hasn't someone informed them that the Writing With Colors program has been here
… and gone … and come back around … and receded … and orbited the public
education community more times than Halley's Comet has through the cosmos?
Which brings me back to the Big Bang, as in banging my head
against the cinderblock walls because I cannot for the life of me figure out
what passes for avant-garde academia these days.
QUESTION: Why do I always let common sense, logic, the
good of the students, and my big defiant mouth get in the way of my career
advancement and an afternoon of napping in a student desk?
ANSWER: Because apparently I'm stupid.
I am tremendously thankful to the Totems-That-Be for
pointing that out. I certainly couldn't
have done it without them.
