Teach Effectively!

I’ve posted a couple of entries decrying the the limp rigor and sorry quality of professional development for teachers. Having seen people attending some very good workshops recently when I was at the Reading First conference in Nashville (TN, US), I was reminded that I wanted to run a Bogus Bowl about the worst in-service sessions readers have seen.

So, I’m calling for nominations. Please send me accounts of the worst professional development sessions at which you’ve had to be present. Now, this will be a little tricky, so I’ve got to promulgate some rules for submissions.

1. Submissions must be real. I’ll take your word for it, but you need to be honest and tell me that you actually had to a participate. That means no second-hand reports, no tales about friend-of-a-friend who went to one about underwater-basketry.
2. The descriptions need to be brief. Ideally, the description should give the actual title, the actual target audience, and a sentence or two about what was presented under that title.
3. The entries should not contain ad hominem or inflammatory language; I’ll edit them so that they are simply reports, so don’t count on adjectives preceding interpretive words (”really stupid”) to make the case. The factual account should suffice.

You may post your submissions to the comments on this post or mail them to me directly: John @ JohnWillsLloyd.com (you’ll need to remove the spaces from that address).