APS professional development day: Grading papers in a coffee shop when mishap sends wrong teachers to training
APS had early release today for teacher training, and APS teachers – elementary school teachers and middle and high school science teachers — showed up at the Carver campus under the impression that they were going to have professional development in science.
But many were instructed to return to their schools as the training at that site was apparently for high school teachers only.
According to teachers, they received notices this week at school telling them that the training was mandatory, but arrived at Carver to find a hand-lettered sign on the door that the 1 p.m. training was only for high school teachers. An APS official was also on hand, advising baffled teachers to return to their schools as their principals would have alternative plans for their afternoon.
But teachers called me from a coffee shop where they were grading papers late in the afternoon because their principal was not at the school and they did not get any e-mails as to what they were supposed to do this afternoon.
Here’s what I think is a bad sign: When I asked a teacher how such a miscommunication could happen, she said, “To be honest, this is APS and there is constant chaos. You never know what is going on.”
An APS spokeswoman said the mistake affected 60 teachers:
There was a glitch at one of the six sites offering professional development for APS teachers this afternoon. Approximately 60 elementary teachers showed up at Carver for science training when the training actually was for high school teachers. Earlier in the day, schools were notified about the change. Apologies were offered to the teachers who did show up. They were instructed to return to their schools. We will follow up with schools to see which teachers did not return.
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103 comments Add your comment
Pluto
August 26th, 2010
7:51 am
I don’t think this is unique to APS although there seems to be more reporting of misdeeds from there. There is simply little or no thought given by the front offices to what would be an effective use of time. I think it’s a job security issue for those in educational management but not in the classroom. Budgets will get even tighter sooner rather than later. It will be increasingly more difficult to justify those positions not in the trenches.
Tonya T.
August 26th, 2010
8:37 am
Harold:
The short answer is YES. They have people who do nothing but file papers (and slowly at that) for $30k.
Been there done that...for 33 years
August 26th, 2010
9:31 am
@grading papers…if they were productive with their time (as most teachers HAVE to be), they probably did take the papers to grade during the waiting game before the training. You’re usually told to be somewhere at a certain time, and it doesn’t get started for 30 to 45 minutes.
Dekalbite@Su
August 26th, 2010
10:07 am
Su makes $190,000 a year for being the head of Atlanta Public Schools PR, and then she writes an intimidating post about teachers who were given misinformation by people who had all summer to get this right. Where do they find these people?
According to her website she is:
“chief communications officer for Atlanta (GA) Public Schools. She provides leadership for the district’s strategic communications and public relations planning and implementation,”
What a way to implement public relations for APS!
What's Best for Kids
August 26th, 2010
10:08 am
@grading papers.
Please tell me you are joking. Have you ever texted at a meeting? Checked you email, the weather, asked your significant other what was for dinner?
I would hope that the teachers took papers to grade during a meeting that some yahoo from downtown deemed “mandatory” but has not stepped foot in the classroom in ten years, but feels like he/she needs to justify his/her job by holding these ridiculous meeetings.
Maureen Downey
August 26th, 2010
10:11 am
@What’s best, I need to post about professional development and see what people think as I have had many teachers tell me that most programs are a waste. In fairness, I have to say that some APS teachers have been very impressed with the math training over the last few years, tied to the big PRISM grant that the state got.
I also want to say that I bring a book to every training session I attend — and I have to get 35 training hours a year. In my next life, I want to be a trainer as I can talk in broad sweeps with the best of them. (And in case my editor is reading; I bring books of authors who I plan to interview for the AJC.)
Maureen
Maureen Downey
August 26th, 2010
10:14 am
@DeKalb, I have to agree that APS ought to be focused on whomever sent the wrong information to the teachers rather than the teachers who showed up on time and where they were told to go.
Again, I would bet that 90 percent of people in any field would have gone home if they were sent to the wrong training place, received zero follow-up communications about what to do and could not find their manager at the office.
What's Best for Kids
August 26th, 2010
10:15 am
Maureen,
Please do. Mandatory staff development is a way for the people downtown to justify their jobs. No question in my mind.
LLL
August 26th, 2010
10:39 am
If people come to any “training session” with the mind set “Mandatory staff development is a way for the people downtown to justify their jobs. No question in my mind.” I can guarantee you that he/she will not learn anything no matter what. I know some people develop this attitude based on their past experiences, but it is still rather sad to see an educator exhibit this attitude. Of course, they then turn around and blame their students and parents…
APS Teacher
August 26th, 2010
11:08 am
@ LLL- I can guarantee you there’s nothing there to be learned in the first place. Last year, I sat through TWO HOURS on how to have your students number the pages in their science journals. Don’t waste my time. Just sit in your downtown office drinking coffee, doing nothing, and leave me alone. And I’m on my lunch for those of you ready to ask why I’m posting during the day.
chillywilly
August 26th, 2010
12:05 pm
We (APS central office employees) have been requested to report to the auditorium at 1:00 today for a meeting with Dr. Hall. Here’s hoping that the U. S. Marshalls will be in attendance, ready to escort Dr. Hall, Ms. Burkes, Penn Payne, Chuck Burbridge, Nader Sohrab, & Crissi Calhoun to a waiting paddy wagon.
I’ll let you know what happened.
Maureen Downey
August 26th, 2010
12:59 pm
@chillywilly, Word is it could be about cooperating with Bowers and Wilson. Let us know. Thanks
What's Best for Kids
August 26th, 2010
1:01 pm
@LLL,
I am aware of what I need to work on. I am aware of my own strengths and weaknesses in education. I think that I should be able to decide my own staff development. Give the mandatory stuff to teachers who are having problems, not those of us who have to go to these and then find our own classes to take.
chillywilly
August 26th, 2010
1:21 pm
@Su Yeager,
If you really want to earn your keep, you can do it by:
1. Initiating an investigation into all of Penn Payne’s OIR investigations from 2008 thru 2010. She has been asked to investigate at least 5 different verbal abuse (sexual harrassment) charges against the current Comptroller.
2. Reopen Penn Payne’s investigation into the two supervisors in Finance who cheated on the time & attendance. Payne was provided with “smoking gun evidence” of cheating by these two employees, but she apparently whitewashed it because they still work there.
3. Investigate the hiring of the current Grants Manager & the current CFO. Something doesn’t smell right with these two hires.
4. Determine whether Finance Management has violated Board Policy by letting an unsupervised contractor spend the night in the building (on several occasions)& sleep underneath the desk.
5. Investigate the most recent payroll breach where an employee in Technology emailed personal employee info on ALL APS employees to several employees in Finance, including the Accounting Manager.
Thanking you in advance because we know you will do the right thing.
Attentive Parent
August 26th, 2010
2:00 pm
Maureen-
So did they get a lot out of classes like “Hula Hoop Math” or “Learning Math through Music” or is it just fun to have PD at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens?
Also please note that the RTT participating districts have committed contractually with Georgia to offer PD and to base it on the Instructional Frameworks.
Hula hoop math is so much more exciting than understanding fractions, ratios, and uses of quadratic equations in science classes
huh?
August 26th, 2010
2:21 pm
@ Attentive Parent,
You seem to be the type of people who just use meaningless labels to critize any idea you just don’t agree on…
Parker
August 26th, 2010
2:34 pm
http://clatl.com/atlanta/metro-atlanta-chamber-public-school-puppet-regime/Content?oid=2031737
Creative Loafing has an insightful article on APS and its relationship with the Metro Atlanta Chamber.
Maureen Downey
August 26th, 2010
3:33 pm
Kristina Torres checked with APS about the meeting and was told:
APS Teacher
August 26th, 2010
4:36 pm
Maureen- Since Su Yeager insists that this training affected only 60 teachers, let me know if you want me to mail you the hard copy of the memo directing K-12 science teachers to report.
Maureen Downey
August 26th, 2010
4:49 pm
Yes, I would like to see it. Do you need the AJC address?
APS Teacher
August 26th, 2010
4:54 pm
Yes, please.
chillywilly
August 26th, 2010
4:56 pm
@Maureen,
Today’s meeting was all about spin control. Beverly Hall made jokes about this blog & told employees not to take it serious because some posters are using more than one alias. Su Yeager was in attendance and actually passed the mic around for employees to ask questions. Some employees wanted to know if it was against board policy to reply to this blog. Beverly Hall danced around that question. She told us that she is NOT going to resign.
Maureen Downey
August 26th, 2010
4:59 pm
Maureen Downey
223 Perimeter Center Parkway
Atlanta, GA,
30346
chillywilly
August 26th, 2010
5:01 pm
@APS Teacher,
I believe you. Here again, the central office is trying to cover their a$$ & place blame on the teachers. Ain’t no way all of these teachers from DIFFERENT schools would have shown up for this training if the administrators had told them not to do so.
Maureen Downey
August 26th, 2010
5:03 pm
Chilly, Thanks. I don’t think Dr. Hall is going to resign. I think she is going to retire on her own steam next year.
Nor do I think that APS is going to stop anyone from posting to this blog or any other since people do not have to use their names and APS folks have a lot of issues that they want aired. I know that a handful of regular posters here use different names, but they pretty much say the same thing so it is not hard to tell who is doing so.
Did Dr. Hall or Ms. Yeager address the mix-up yesterday on training?
Maureen
APS Teacher
August 26th, 2010
5:05 pm
I have the main Perimeter Center address. If there is a different one I should use, just let me know.
APS Teacher
August 26th, 2010
5:06 pm
Never mind- just saw your post. Thank you.
Old School
August 26th, 2010
5:32 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
Interesting research on motivation. Worth a look, folks.
It's working
August 26th, 2010
5:49 pm
“Today’s meeting was all about spin control. Beverly Hall made jokes about this blog & told employees not to take it serious…”
Just the fact that Hall acknowledged its existence, and tried to downplay it shows that it is working. Ms. Downey, are you willing to state for the record that the AJC blog moderators will not divulge IP addresses or any other identifying information to APS or any other school system officials?
Give the AJC credit
August 26th, 2010
5:55 pm
For far too many times in recent history, it’s been Creative Loafing breaking the story that was, shall we say, “uncomfortable” to the business community all while the AJC provided the business community comfort with their silence.
Not in this case. Creative Loafing is late to the party, not fashionably late, just flat dropped the ball late. In this case the excellent work of the AJC reporters on this story appears to have embarrassed the Loaf into action, rather than the other way around as has happened in the past.
Credit to the AJC reporters, and yes the editors who let them run with the story.
What gives?
August 26th, 2010
5:58 pm
Maureen, can you please try to get some answers as to why Cynthia Tucker’s column, beautifully titled “Beverly Hall needs to retire” has closed it comments section.
Attentive Parent
August 26th, 2010
6:01 pm
@huh?
What “meaningless label” did I use?
Those were actual APS PD classes and they were held at the Botanical Garden. Perhaps it was even catered.
We know a lot about how human beings learn secondary derived skills and knowledge like math, science, and reading. We know much more about how the brain works than we did prior to diagnostic imaging techniques like MRI.
Too often we ignore what works so that we can either have a common low but fairer outcome or because the remediation gravy train is so lucrative. Maybe we actually believe that the unanalytical, poorly informed students of today can be the easy to manipulate citizens of tomorrow.
Maybe it’s simply because too many ed scholls do not teach what is effective.
Please tell me how APS students benefit from these types of PD courses.
Maybe you can get the cultural anthropology prof from Ga State that APS hired in the mid-90s to explain to its teachers that it was OK to switch to inquiry math and science and that they just did not understand how the human brain worked to come post and explain it to all Maureen’s readers.
I know she will not mind. After all such advocacy did wonders for her career.
Marge
August 26th, 2010
6:27 pm
As a media specialist in APS, I have gone to some very interesting “professional development” sessions.
For example, a couple of weeks ago every media specialist in the system went to Atl. Tech for a day long waste of time. It’s on APS’s Talk Up on their website. These are very interesting because every time we have one (3 a year) the main focus is about 20 or so vendors who are there most of the day… We are encouraged to examine their “wares” etc.
Then there are presentations. Some of them are entertaining, but they’re not developing anyone professionally. Then there are the “donators” – People who are donating their dvd’s, cd’s etc. to APS media centers. We have to sit and listen to 6 year olds singing about having a good day.
I would say out of those 8 hours, there is probably only about 30 minutes of professional development. And that information could be sent via email.
We have furlough days. And APS can afford to pay for 100 plus subs for the media specialists 3 times a year?
That makes no sense.
chillywilly
August 26th, 2010
6:37 pm
@Maureen,
No, they did not address the mix-up with yesterday’s training. You could sense that employees in today’s meeting were afraid to ask tough questions for fear they would be walked out of the building at 4:00 tomorrow.
It’s strange that Beverly Hall talked about not taking this blog serious, but APS PR person, Su Yeager, posted on his yesterday. Perhaps it wasn’t Su Yeager at all.
Ed Johnson
August 26th, 2010
8:46 pm
@Old School,
Much appreciation for the link to motivation. Great stuff! For more, you might check out Alfie Kohn, at http://www.alfiekohn.com, and especially his book, Punished by Rewards.
Maureen Downey
August 26th, 2010
9:17 pm
@chilly, I am not too worried about Dr. Hall’s comments. Folks dedicated to her defense have sent me and continue to send me suggestions for the blogs and letters of support that they would like to see posted, so I am fairly confident that they think the blog is a worthwhile effort, at least worthwhile enough to want to get their point of view on it.
Maureen
Doris M
August 26th, 2010
9:44 pm
Cynthia Tucker’s column was dead on suggesting that Beverly Hall retire. She brought out many points that I was certain no one outside APS even knew. I’m just sorry that the comments section was closed. Keep up the good work AJC.
Telling
August 26th, 2010
9:47 pm
“@chilly, I am not too worried about Dr. Hall’s comments.”
It appears Dr. Hall and/or her supporters are much more worried about this blog than Maureen is worried about Dr. Hall doesn’t it?
Calendar committee
August 26th, 2010
11:15 pm
I was a representative on the APS calendar committee back in 2008 when the current calendars were drafted, and the curriculum and instruction division requested that the professional development time be front-loaded in the school year.
It made sense to me that teacher training would be better done earlier in the year.
parent power
August 27th, 2010
12:35 pm
I heard that all of the kids left early to go to Riverwood…
another mom
August 27th, 2010
5:06 pm
I’m getting all of my kid’s teachers gift certificates to Starbucks for Christmas this year.
rh
August 27th, 2010
5:48 pm
This always happens in education. I teach at a university, full-time non-tenured, and the rules continually change and the communication is worse than anywhere I’ve ever worked (I have 15 years experience in industry). So much time is spent complaining about other professors at faculty meetings, I just want to stand up and start rattling off what those present have done to destroy communication and cause harm to the university and its students.
I wonder also where parents work that they don’t see this kind of miscommunication happen all the time.
Karen S of S. Cobb
August 27th, 2010
6:29 pm
AJC can’t share or identify us 2 anyone. can they?
Maureen Downey
August 27th, 2010
7:00 pm
@Karen, No one has ever asked me the identity of a poster. And I would not release it.
Ole Guy
August 28th, 2010
10:29 am
As long as no one has the guts to pinch a few spheroids, this sort of crap will happen again and again ad nauseum.
educated professional
August 28th, 2010
11:19 am
I am so tired of APS not paying teachers on time for special programs they complete and Saturday school that they teach. When you do ask about it they tell you it will take 4 to 6 months to receive payment. I am sure that CO employees get paid in a reasonable amount of time. Then when you do get paid they do not indicate what you are being paid for. It simply says one-time payment. I am sure that they are getting over because by the time you finally get something you have forgotten what you are due. I do keep records and have been inquiring about this for quite some time and have been told to be quiet or run the risk of not being allowed to work. Also when you ask the administration about payment for Saturday school with students (every Saturday during testing season) you are told you should do it for the children. I love the kids I teach, but I do not live right around the corner and gas is not cheap. I do not thing it is unreasonable to be paid to come work with students for 4 hours on a Saturday.
J. J.
August 29th, 2010
12:12 pm
APS central office needs to be cleaned out, starting with the
Superintendent and moving throughout each office…START WITH A CLEAN SLATE.
Where is Dr. Norman????? Help….
chillywilly
August 30th, 2010
12:33 pm
@J.J.,
I agree with you. Dr. Norman Thomas would be an excellent Interim Superintendent to bring stability to APS. He’s very intelligent, very well liked, has excellent people skills, and is just the person they need right now. I couldn’t understand why he wasn’t selected the Superintendent instead of Beverly Hall in the first place.
Real Reformer
August 30th, 2010
1:19 pm
parent power — to your comment that
I heard that all of the kids left early to go to Riverwood…
30 students were not permitted to start at Riverwood this year, most (all but one or two) were 9th graders. I have been told that of those 30, only one enrolled in a APS school. And they spent countless hours and funds on this issue. Another example of misplaced priorities.
ATL
August 31st, 2010
1:18 am
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