More pseudo-Professional Development

We had an in-service last week. Another dreadful waste of 4 hours.

The title of the conference was “Disruptive Behavior Disorders” and it was presented by a local Ph.D. I was excited because of the reputation of the clinic this psychologist worked at.

The room was full of about 25-30 folks – most (90% of better) from the k-12 education realm. So I was looking forward to getting some good strategies to add to my bag of tricks on dealing with kids with behaviors.

Of course, if that happened, I probably wouldn’t have been driven to type this post.

We spent the morning talking about many of the disruptive behavior disorders that are out there.  And why do I need to know more labels to put on my kids?  So they have Oppositional Defiant Disorder?  Now what???  Okay, they’ve got a conduct disorder.  NOW WHAT???

Sadly, we didn’t get to the interventions.  We spent waaaaaayyyy too much time focused on what disorders are out there and only about 15 minutes on what we can do about it.  How is this good use of funds in a school district that WILL cut $800,000 from next year’s budget?

How can I be an instrument of change so that we don’t continue to waste money on professional development that is unhelpful and irrelevant?

Much Ado About Writing

Probably one of the most disappointing conferences I’ve ever attended.

I’ve been to conferences where I’ve disagreed with points shared by speakers.
But this one really was disappointing on a number of levels.

I was going to rant about the details of this conference, but I’m trying to hold back.  I know, makes for boring reading, but I’m trying to be a little civil.