January, Week 1: Teacher Work Day: January Staff Meeting

Leah checked her email and cleared out some of the few spam emails that came through the school’s heavy filters. Even as she was checking her email as she sipped her coffee the electric crack of the intercom blared an announcement from Mr. Howard.

“Welcome back Pleasant Plains teachers!” he said with remarkable cheer “Please be sure to check your emails this morning. We will have a staff meeting at 10:00am and plenty of professional development from the central office this afternoon.”

Nearly every teacher who heard the announcement groaned with the thought of sitting through another death by PowerPoint in the guise of Professional Development from the Central Office—most of those folks hadn’t taught in a classroom in a decade or more and were completely out of touch with reality. Most of their professional development was a huge waste of time. But it was important that they showed the state Department of Education that their teachers were always up to date for their teacher certification renewal processes.

10am came faster than Leah anticipated but she made it down the empty halls in time and entered the library to find most of the teachers already there or filtering in. She looked for a place to sit.