- Our school district is switching student information systems in less than a month. Part of my job description is to support the whole school staff through the whole process. Part of my job description is to train all of the teachers at my school how to use the system - most importantly, how to take attendance on April 3rd. (It's also a personal goal to train a few other people in just a little more than just attendance to make my life easier in the long run.)
- The staff meeting where I was planning to introduce everyone to the primary concepts of the new system got cancelled today because of a pep assembly.
- I had a four day training on the new product about three weeks ago - I have yet to recover from taking four days off.
- On the last day of that training, I received notice that (thanks to decisions at the district) Apple Computer was shipping almost 100 new computers to my school - to arrive within the next week. I don't have storage space for 100 computers.
- My son had surgery on a dermoid cyst last Wednesday. All went well, but I missed yet another day of work and he seems to only feel the pain at bedtime. He also learned two tricks this week: crawling and pulling up. These are two really fun tricks for a child with eight fresh stitches over his left eye. He likes to practice these at bedtime too...
- The bookkeeper is ending the budget cycle next week so that purchases have time to amortize by the end of the fiscal year. Suffice it to say that I still have budget money to spend.
- Today, I got a call from my wife while I was at work saying that she had thrown up and that she would like me to come home as early as possible.
Tonight, my son was having trouble falling asleep and, of course, only I could attempt to comfort him. It was obvious that he didn't want me, he wanted mommy. It was obvious that his eye was bothering him. It was obvious that he wanted to be moving around and not lying down.
I found myself saying, "If you would just slow down and rest here with daddy, you would realize that everything is going to be okay!"
hmm...
LOVE tha parable. Too true! I suspect parenting is full of such parallels. Perhaps someday I'll find out for myself.
ReplyDeleteSo, who's bright idea was it to implement this new system in the middle of the semester instead of having the teachers come in a day early to learn it before fall semester?
And, does your wife know you have informed all of cyber-space of her extra-digestive activities? Tell her I hope she feels better soon!
Actually, I'm very much in support of an April changeover. Because of the transfer of data from one system to the other it needed to be done over a week long break - so that leaves us with 4 options:
ReplyDelete1) summer break
2) fall break
3) Christmas (er, I mean winter) break
4) spring break
Fall break is too early in the semester - people would just be getting settled into a pattern, and then we'd change everything. After Christmas, it is hard enough to be starting a new semester with zero prep time - it would be awful to force another transition too. As you pointed out, summer seem natural, but if you think about an entire district needing training and how much time that requires, it would require about a day from everybody and there aren't enough locations to do all that training in one day. (Keep in mind that most elementary schools are in session for most of the summer too.)
What we are doing instead is offering trainings over the entire month of March for classified staff (all the "non-teachers") and having the teachers learn nothing but attendance for that first day. When the teachers come back in the fall, we'll train them on the entire system - getting reports, grade book, seating charts, etc. Yes, summer seems natural, but introducing it late in the year will actually improve acceptance and training.