Today classes ended early so we could do professional development. Last time we did professional development it was Socratic seminar and I like the guy teaching so I paid attention and got something out of it. This time, I missed the sign up so the administrator in charge of scheduling put me in Classroom Management.
I have like zero classroom management problems. I am a master at classroom management. Other teachers ask me for advice on Classroom Management. So as you can imagine, I was not looking forward to this experience.
So I went in and sat at the back and right as I was sitting down the dude running the seminar told me to move up front and sit with this other dude so I could be his partner. I pulled out my laptop and began working quietly on my screenplay.
I've gotten some new notes that make me feel more optimistic because I feel like this is an attainable task and it will make my script stronger. I'm to take the protagonist and focus on her internal conflict as I rework only the first ten pages. Sounds like a perfect task to complete while I'm avoiding boredom in the Classroom Management workshop.
So I worked on the script and got a lot done. I stopped to do a stupid ice breaker activity - my partner insisted on sharing out, too, which annoyed me. I really didn't mean for the entire class to know that I don't drink milk - and then I went back to what I was doing. And every time we were told to do an assignment I did it, then went back to typing.
The dude's wife was also instructing us - mind you, neither of these two has been in a classroom for a decade and the man was barely in it at all - and he came over and made some indecipherable pantomime.
"Excuse me?" I said.
He did the same pantomime and mouthed something.
"What?" I said louder.
"Close your laptop," he said.
I wanted to remind him that I am an adult, but I shut my laptop loudly and pulled out a pen and paper, where I began to work on backstory for my male lead. This was pretty terrific because I only had one piece of paper and lots of time to kill so I wrote really tiny and filled up the paper. Lots of good stuff came out of me in my effort to avoid paying attention.
Some time went by. I did another activity with my partner, then resumed my writing. I doubt anybody in the room even noticed what I was doing, and I was in no way disturbing the class. Plus, they were boring.
Dude's wife came over and observed me for a minute, I guess thinking that since she was sitting right next to me I would pretend to care. I did not. She leaned over and whispered that she'd like to speak to me outside. So we went into the hall.
"What you're doing is clearly very important, can you do it somewhere else?"
"I'm here because I'm getting paid," I said.
"You clearly don't care about this."
"Look, I missed the sign up so somebody threw me in here. I'm not a new teacher and I don't have any classroom management problems. I'm bored."
"Oh. Well I understand that, but you clearly don't care about this so I was wondering if there was somewhere else you could be doing whatever you're doing."
I walked back into the room, packed my shit, and left and hour early. I drove to Burbank where I picked up my footage from Editor as we buried the hatched and came to an understanding. Now that I have my original footage back he can still work on the short while I get the footage to my actors and have something to play with in my ongoing effort to learn editing.
I was able to leave work, get the footage, go home and complete my afternoon emails all before I usually get home on weekdays. Because I was bad.
Bad kid 1, Classroom Management People 0.
So in conclusion, Emily at work = big brass testicles. Emily at the grocery store = massive wussyface.
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