Today I go back to school for a training day, before the children return tomorrow. I have no idea what the training day is. I do know that it doesn't involve me. Which means I can just get on with start of term stuff and get out early. Suits me.
But I always wonder about training days. To be honest I really can't remember a single one that I've been involved with that had any real point to it. I've been to training sessions that were useful, but in the majority of these cases the entire training; all of the information I needed to take away from the session could quite easily be sent in a couple of e-mails.
But the terrible cult of the trainer comes in at this point. I'm sure that there are some trainers out there who manage to have an entire day of training and energise their audience with new information and send them away desperate to try out these new things. But I haven't met them yet.
This reminds me of when I used to teach. On days such as these, our headteacher would lead a training session. He'd write huge swathes of pointless text into a powerpoint presentation, then stand, with his back to us, looking at the projector screen, reading what he'd written to us. Inevitably, we'd get to the end of it before he did.
ReplyDeleteIn those cases, I can't see how sending the presentation to us wouldn't have been considerably more efficient and marginally less dull...