Inservice, Meetings and getting ready for the First Day!

This was our "official" week back to school. It was a week filled with meetings and pages of information. The best day of the week of course was Monday which was my day. By that I mean, it was my day to present technology to our staff. We had quite a bit to cover and I wanted to show them some cool tools also. We did a quick review of Discovery Education, Thinkfinity and the ever important presentation on Copyright in the Classroom. Besides all of that we were able to do a quick "look-see" at Edmodo, Google Timeline and Wonderwheel, Batchgeo and we ended with Voki, everyone's favorite. I was excited to see many of our teachers want to set up their own wiki space for their classrooms. They are also wanting to use as much technology as they can. Today one of our teachers was working on a bullitin board and created a word cloud. I love seeing their enthusiasm and willingness to learn.

Unfortunately the bulk of the rest of the week was devoted to meetings. Not that they were all that bad, it is just hard to focus when I am thinking of all the unfinished things I have to do before the first day with students. I understand that we must have these meetings prior to the start of school to prepare our teachers for any new requirements within their schools or districts. The problem I see is that teachers do not have enough time to prepare their classrooms (basically redecorating every year) and plan those new and exciting lessons for the first week of school. It seems they must do all of this on their own time. Coming to school a week ahead of the required start or staying long into the evening.

My intent is not to whine and complain. It is the nature of the beast. This is just my observation of many years of first days of school. I also offer no solution since there is not simple way to resolve this. I hope though that administrations recognize this devotion and remember when their staff might make requests.