Teachers Talk

The last 3 days I spent at the University of Arkansas being trained in CGI (Cognitively Guided Instruction) through a program called Thinking Mathematically.  Overall, it was fantastic.  After attending professional development sessions, conferences, and meetings for the past 3 years, these are my [general] observations:

1. Teachers are really bad at being students.  

Rarely can a group of teachers sit through a training session of any kind and use the self-control that we inflict on our own students on a daily basis.  Basically, teachers are horrible listeners.  They talk, talk, talk during professional development.  They don't raise their hand.  They don't wait to ask questions until all of the instructions have been given.  It's just ironic given that most teachers are irritated by their own chatty students in class, yet when the tables are turned, we just cannot help ourselves.  I'm as guilty as the next person, but I am honestly appalled at how rude some teachers can be.  It's pretty sad at times and today I found myself just shaking my head a few times...

2.   Teaching teachers has got to be one of the hardest jobs EVER.

I guess this just ties back to #1.  The presenters at my workshop were phenomenal.  I think they must know that when you get a group of teachers together, you can just expect a lot of chatting and side-bar discussions to break out, and they honestly weren't thrown for a loop by it at all.  They just went with it.  I admire that.  A. LOT.

3.  Teachers are extremely controlling and have so many OCD moments. 

It is very normal to have teachers switch to the role of students during workshops.  We do this to try out a particular strategy, see it through the eyes of the student, with the hope that we will be able to replicate it in our classrooms one day.    Having said that, teachers are so funny in those situations.  When given a task or a problem to complete, we are still constantly thinking like a teacher, but being asked to work like a student.  I heard so many teachers asking the exact same questions that my students typically ask "Are we going to be turning this in?"  "What is it that she wants us to write down?"  "How long do we have to do this?"  "Why did she have us do __________.  Why wouldn't we just do ______?"  I just had to laugh.  It's hard to sit in the room as a teacher and think like a student at the same time. Teachers are just an interesting group of characters.


Overall, the conference was great.
I loved it.
I have so many ideas running around in my brain that it feels like it's going to explode.
I'll share more about that later. 
Teachers are funny, funny people.
God bless teachers.
The end.