First
official day back! This means meetings,
meetings, and more meetings.
This
afternoon we work our way through three meetings: one to teach us how to sign
out technology to use in our classrooms, one to teach us about Windows 8.1, and
one to teach us how to use a new and extremely technologically advanced phone
system.
I
am traveling with my best pals, saving them seats if I get to a session early,
and they’re doing the same for me if I get to a session late. We also notice that the principal is
attending the same rotation of workshops as are we, and that she is also
sitting in the back near us.
Normal
people would take this as a sign that they should behave during the
meetings.
We
are middle school teachers; we are not normal people.
As
we sit through the phone system seminar, we notice that the entire room is lost
in a sea of confusion. We do not
understand a single thing this guy is trying to tell us about the new,
computerized phones. So far we have all
managed to stay with him somewhat while talking about registering for voice
mail, but then it all gets too complicated.
You
see, it used to be easy to use our phone system: Dial “9” to get an outside line, then dial
the number. Period. Easy.
For voicemail, all we have to do is hit the voicemail icon and … BOOM …
like that, we are connected. Magic!
All
of a sudden, this guy starts getting short-tempered with us. “Look,” he stresses, “you don’t have to dial
9. You don’t even have to dial 1. Don’t dial 9 or 1.”
The
science geek sitting to my right turns my way and asks, “Then how do we dial
9-1-1?”
This,
of course, makes me giggle. Good thing I’m
in the back of a packed room, one seat away from the principal.
Suddenly,
my pal to the left leans away from me and toward that same principal. Oh. Boy, this is it. We’re in trouble for laughing about
9-1-1. I’ll bet she’s going to tell us
to grow up.
She
bends closer to my pal and whispers, “We don’t even have this phone system.”
My
pal gives her a surprised glance and asks, “Then why are we being trained?”
The
principal smirks and shrugs her shoulders, holding her upturned palms in the
classic Beats-the-hell-outta-me
posture.
At
this point, I almost lose it. I swear I
am going to pee myself. Here we are
sitting through training … for something even the administration knows is
futile … and the principal is the one cracking the jokes.
I
pass this info along to the science geek to my right, and the information makes
its way around the back of the room until finally the principal stops the
presenter from continuing, sparing us all the agony of completing a useless
training.
In
the end, though, it truly is a successful session. After all, the somewhat humorous (yet
frustrating) information that we are being trained in non-existent telephone
technology has been passed from participant to participant the old fashioned
way … via the old-time gossip game of Telephone.
