"BTSA" - Bitter Teacher Says "ABOLISH!"


After the most needless, worthless, time consuming four session ELD class, I reluctantly attended the end of the year Colloquium; another tedious, painful affair. Another fatty, tepid meal. PLEASE ! KEEP THE FOOD AND LET US LEAVE EARLY! Or, let us bring a snack and GIVE US THE MONEY INSTEAD! (Anyone more enterprising than I may want to investigate to reveal how much of the proposed $65 million dollar BTSA budget goes towards these food costs – I’m sure it is staggering). Another less than inspiring “motivating” speaker - this one saying “Well, we have to do BTSA, so suck it up.” Wow, that pumped me up! The second speaker said the great thing about BTSA is that he leaves “each seminar having learned at least one thing.” Now, most seminars are seven hours long – cut out lunch – and that is six hours of potential learning. Do we expect our students, who receive more like 4.5 hours of actual instruction each day, to come away with learning just one thing per day? This is considered a success? Judging from the amount of information our students need to learn (according to the all-mighty State Standards), this “a fact a day” goal is sorely lacking. Why are we teachers expected to raise the bar so high when our supposed Mentor Organization’s bar is so egregiously low? Also, I have received more seminars and books about Differentiation than is humane. I have been told again and again to engage gifted students, that they need to be challenged and, without challenges, will lose interest. So, if the seminars continue to be so devoid of content, then why can we NOT grade papers? I lay bets I can grade papers, compose an opera, file my nails, and STILL grasp the content of these monotonous affairs. Why am I, a new teacher with too damn much work to do already, made to cut out paper tear drops and write little cute notes on them at 9:00 AM on a Saturday morning? For this is what we did at the laughable colloquium. (And, when done - as it did not take me 15 minutes to write a four line thank you, despite the fact that this much time was allotted -I was reprimanded for doing other paperwork while waiting.) It seems I am to sit slack jawed, staring into space while those apparently not quite familiar with the concept of a ballpoint pen finish up. Then we were made to watch clips of "Mr. Holland's Opus", write another Mother F*$#ing "Reflection" (I'm so sick of Reflections, I am looking into becoming a vampire) and given yet another book that I don't have time to read. This is the model classroom?