Back to school. I honestly do enjoy going back to work. And I do love my school and my job. I don't stick around my school for convenience, I do truly enjoy where I work. I think I enjoy the students the most along with the majority of the staff I work with.
BUT...there are always those things and/or people about work that get on your nerves. I know I've already blogged about one of them. You can read about it here.
There is however another person I work with that gets on my nerves just as much, if not more than "that guy." For totally different reasons. Although I can appreciate our principal, she can be a bit over the top at times (those times mainly including every second of the day, of course, excluding when she's sleeping...I'd assume). It's a bit like being at a southern black baptist church (and I mean no disrespect when I say that, she admits she's like that). Every time she speaks to us it is as if she is delivering a sermon. Which would be fine if it was just once a year in some sort-of motivational speech. But with her, it is every time she makes a noise with her voice. After an entire year, it gets OLD.
As an added bonus for our absolute enjoyment, she also wears outfits that are way too tight. (I am not even kidding she split her skirt one day at school last year because it was that much too tight. Then, THEN....Instead of running out and buying something else to wear she embraced the spandex pants for the rest of the day that someone scrummaged up for her to wear. I honestly couldn't make that up if I tried.)
I'm not the only one that feels that way about her. It is very obvious that the majority of the faculty feels that way about her as well. During the school year she isn't so bad mostly because we don't hardly have to converse (or see her and her clothing). But these two weeks called work week, we get her full force.
This year she decided to throw an all new curve ball into the mix. And his last name is Flippin. (Honestly, I can't make this stuff up.) This was to be another dreaded motivational speaker coming to talk to us. Bringing them is not only a waste of our time but it is also an incredible waste of school funds. It would be great if what they taught us was something practical that we could use. But 90% of the time these speakers give you nothing practical to work with or the majority of the staff is unwilling to change their ways. Then they charge the school some ridiculous amount of money to do the whole thing.
If you couple his name with the already predisposed judgement I have about motivational speakers, you can see why I was not thrilled about this program. I spent the entire evening before making statements such as, "I've got this flippin meeting tomorrow." Or, "I can't wait to get this flippin thing over." My favorite was, "This better be flippin good." Getting to say such statements was the only relief to the thought of enduring the program the next day (and when I say day, I mean 8:00 am to 3:30 pm, pretty hard core).
I do have to admit, Mr. Flip Flippin was not soooooo bad. His whole program was about building relationships with students, which I do believe is very important. He did give some good specific examples and he wasn't a bore to listen to either. He did pick on me and made me get up in front of the entire room and repeat some sentences that I couldn't begin to regurgitate now (or really even then, I messed them all up). I wasn't happy about that, but it's okay.
Apparently this guy mostly does work now with college and professional football players/teams. According to him (which you do have to take with a grain of salt) he works with the Dallas Cowboys, the Longhorns and the Aggies. Supposedly he is writing a book with Colt McCoy's dad about raising champions. He is out of College Station and wrote a book called "The Flip Side." His resume went on for about another 20 minutes, but lets be honest, none of us care anymore.
Unfortunately, just because he wasn't so bad in my mind doesn't mean that the rest of the staff bought into his ideas. After talking with some of the faculty it is obvious that many of them are not going to change their ways. It is hard to implement a whole new system into your classroom. I am going to try, but it does get to be hard when none of your peers are doing the same.
The only other thing that pains me now about this whole flippin thing is his follow-up training. So he's planted the seed, but now if we want to learn the rest we have to schedule a follow-up training that costs (still not kidding) $24,000!!! My principal seems to think we will be able to raise this money. I seem to think she is crazy. We have our obvious differences, as you can tell.
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