A Brand New School Year
As a former teacher, I have a lot of teacher friends. Makes sense. And I will tell you that we are generally excited for a new school year to begin. Parents are excited because it has been a long ass summer for them with their kids! They can’t wait for school to start. Students generally get a little excited, although they won’t admit it, to having school start too. They get to be with their friends and see them throughout the day. But, generally, they do hate all the classroom work, homework, and tests.
One thing that teachers hate is all the meetings at the beginning of the year. We are not built to sit for long periods of time, especially in a meeting. That is just not who we are or what we do. So to sit in long meetings drives us insane. First, the meetings are unnecessary. Generally everything that is being said can be put in an email! Probably most people and most professions could say that. Second, meetings for us are stressful. Not because of the meetings or the contents in the meetings but because we are wasting time. This is valuable time that we could be in our classrooms getting ready. Physically getting the classroom ready, making our lesson plans, doing all of the things and materials that need to be done to start the first week of school. But instead, we’re sitting on our ass, listening to nonsense!
Even though I’m not teaching right now, I am reminded of these days by my friends and by a lot of what I see on social media: Twitter, X, Facebook, and Instagram. You will see teachers after teachers after teachers complaining about these first few days. They are called professional development days or PD for short.
Along with a lot of these posts complaining about these days, they do talk about things that we can do to have a little fun. And the one that I’ve seen over and over again and I’ve seen it for the past few years is the bingo game. This is where you write in different things in the squares and when those things actually are said or happen, then you mark it off. Whoever has bingo wins.
Now, as you might have guessed, we have to be careful with this. We have to do this in secrecy because we are literally making fun of administration. I’ve seen two different comments about this on social media. One person said that they actually got caught doing this and they got written up. Getting written up is our version of getting in trouble with administration. I’m not sure how much trouble you could get into but you don’t wanna piss off your bosses anymore than you normally would anyway. Another comment I saw was how their administration actually played the game with the teachers. Now I found that kind of hard to believe because again, we are literally making fun of these jackasses. If someone’s making fun of you, do you wanna play the game with them? I don’t think so. As administration, if I saw teachers making fun of me or as a teacher, if I saw students making fun of me, I’m not gonna play the game with them. What I would do is change my tactics–change the day because obviously everyone fucking hates it.
So in memory of my fellow teachers that have to endure this hell, I have my own version of the bingo card. This has been drawn from a lot of different posts that I’ve seen, but most of it has been from personal experience. My friends that are at my former school will totally understand all of this.
First, I don’t use the letters BINGO. I would use the letters TITBS. This Is Total BullShit. Just my twist on things. Then we need to fill up the card. Now for those that are not in the teaching profession I’m going to tell you some of the things that I would put in my squares, but then I’m also gonna tell you what they mean and why I would put them in there. For my teacher friends, all I have to do is say the word and they know exactly why they need to put that in the square. So here is my version of the TITBS card.
One Square: Stupid Question (This is because there will be one or maybe even two people who will ask a stupid, stupid, stupid question and it was already covered in the meeting!)
One Square: New Administration (It is fine to introduce the new administrators, but then these new people will give advice for the new year. The problem? These people have either never taught before or who haven’t taught since the beginning of COVID. Yes, please let me take advice from you!)
One Square: Staff Members (Then there will be administrators who will stand up in front of everyone to talk about different staff members and mispronounce their names!! I kid you not!)
One Square: Forget their slide (Admin loves doing slides and doing them together–this admin addresses these 2 slides, then the next admin does 2 slides, etc. However, they do not practice this collaboration and it ends up at least one admin going “Oh, is that my slide?”)
One Square: Respect Your Time (Admin will get up and proclaim “This will be short. I want to respect your time.” And then proceed to run way over because they love to hear themselves talk!)
One Square: Ice Breaker (This is bad on so many levels. First, if you have a staff of 200, that ice breaker will go into HOURS. If you have a staff of 10, we already know each other really well. We don’t need a damn ice breaker!)
One Square: Leave Early (Some admin will wave a carrot in front of you. “If we work through lunch, then we can leave early!” Like they are giving us some wonderful gift. Listen, we are teachers in a new school year. We came in early, we ALWAYS work through lunch, and we will leave late. You are really out of touch with teaching, aren’t you?)
One Square: End Early (Some admin will literally say this: “I will end the meeting 15 minutes early, so you have time to work in your classroom.” You want us to say Thank You for letting us do our job instead of listening to you speak? Give me a break! Yeah, that extra “15 minutes” will make all the difference in the world…
One Square: Stupid Work (Never have I left a meeting that didn’t tell me I had to do 10 things for them and they were due at the end of the day! “I will need you to complete this survey, write out your 3 goals for the year, watch these 3 videos, take the quizzes, and upload your first week’s lesson plans by the end of the day. Oh, and include what ice breaker you will be doing with the children.”)
Finally, any squares left you can fill in with the buzz words: Rigor, SEL, differentiated learning, data, unpack, remember your why, summatives, evaluations, etc. There are so many others and teachers will be easily able to fill in the rest of the card.
I really don’t understand why administration feels the need for these PD meetings in the beginning of the year. One time, when I taught in the elementary, our principal had us watch the entire movie Dead Poets’ Society. Excellent movie but to waste my time watching a 90-minute movie, in which we all have seen a million times, when I could have been getting ready for my children? Let me slap my forehead right now.
To all fellow teachers:
May you have some great lessons that go well
May you have a safe and calm classroom
May you have very few administrators in your classroom
May you have days that you can leave at a reasonable time
May you have reasonable, caring parents to support education
And may you have a great year!
Blog Website: https://www.lifelessonsfrommemaw.com/
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