Oh, how I despise training days. Teaching for the better parts of 33 years, it's hard to teach this old dog new tricks. Even when you give them a new name, they are still the same ole tricks. I have known the tricks forever and they don't really do much for me anymore, especially when there is no benefit to me.
Today's lesson was characterization. I've always been pretty good at picking out the traits of characters and determining the who, what, when, where, why and how they are the way they are. The traits and the characters, that is. So today we spent our time analyzing a few characters, most of which were the bad guys. From my point of view, there are far too many bad guys in the world and we keep letting the bad guys seem to win. But really, they don't win because the good people of the world choose not to let the bad guys overpower us (note: I consider myself one of the good people who refuses to give in.)
On another wee tangent about training: Please don't tell me I'm coming to train on one topic (teaching English, for example) and then sprinkle in a bunch of unrelated/irrelevant technology to make it appear more interesting. It doesn't. It is confusing. If you want to give me technology training, then do that. But stop muddying the waters with co-mingled crap. I don't have a promethean board in my classroom and I don't want one. So I don't need to know how to use it, and you are wasting my time showing me a bunch of tricks I will never use.
I also do not teach grammar while I am teaching literature. Kids don't like it. "Here, write a sentence about this book that has something to say about characterization and oh, add in some participial phrases to that sentence while you are at it." WHAT? Why would I do that? In the editing lesson, maybe, but not while I'm trying to get them to find the motive behind a character's actions. Hello.
Used to be we tried to focus kids on certain concepts and let them delve into them, digging for meaning. Let's generate a list of qualities about these protagonists/antagonists and defend why/how we think so. Let's learn how to incorporate evidence from the work to support what we believe our findings are. THEN, once we write about this, let's learn how to edit and organize, combine sentences, phrases, clauses and thoughts so the ideas that are subordinate become that and our main points become those.
Lordy be. I need to retire.
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