Teacher Work Days Deconstructed

AIA-FL Blog ^ | June 1, 2010 | Malcolm A. Kline

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Teacher Work Days Deconstructed Malcolm A. Kline, June 1, 2010 Malcolm A. Kline

Those of us who find Teacher Work Days a relatively recent phenomenon, if not an oxymoronic one, can get a bird’s eye view of what they sometimes consist of from an inside account of an educational conference held late last year. Mary Grabar, who teaches at two colleges in Atlanta, delivered her report on the National Council of Social Studies conference on the website of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.

“There, 3200 teachers were continuing their studies in pedagogy, gaining continuing and graduate credit to bump them into higher salaries,” Grabar wrote. “Most worked for public schools, so taxpayers footed the bill: the $267 registration fee, plus membership dues, travel and lodging, and the hiring of substitute teachers.”

The sessions Grabar attended included:

* “Hooray for Heroes, in which famed educator Dennis Denenberg demonstrated how to use puppets in the high school classroom to promote certain ‘heroes,’ most notably Eleanor Roosevelt;
* “Teaching Like a Native, where teachers were enjoined to shed their ‘Eurocentric’ ways of thinking for the more associative (and apparently illogical) modes that Native American children favor;
* “Muslim Perspectives Through Film and Dialogue: Understanding, Empathy, Civic Discourse, where Barbara Petzen, who is employed by the Middle East Policy Council, showed and offered teachers the film Allah Made Me Funny, which disparages Christianity and offers Islam as a hip and tolerant alternative;
* “Count Me IN! Census and Economic Sustainability, in which, as the title suggests, one needs to be counted in order to get funding from the federal government....

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Another thread had ‘The Teacher Salary Bailout’ and yet at the same time, taxpayers spend millions on Diversity workshops and Multicultural seminars.

Simply Amazing.

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To be fair, I work in a private school. The one or two designated “work days” we receive each year are reserved for actual work, not liberal indoctrination. Usually grounds clean-up or, for the male teachers, cabinet and desk moving. However, my wife, who taught in the government system for years, can tell some stories...