Faculty Inservice Day

Today was a day off from school for the kids and a day of "inservice" for faculty and staff. What does that mean?

Well, there are nine Catholic High Schools in our diocese. All of them had the day off. The faculty and staff from all nine schools met at one of the schools for a day of togetherness, information, and . . . I guess, learning.

Here's how the day went:

8:00 Continental Breakfast. Really nothing for me at Continental Breakfasts anymore, so I ate before I went. That meant a lot of standing around, trying not to look like I was avoiding the donut/muffin table. And trying not to look like I'm uncomfortable in large groups of strangers.

9:00 Mass with the new bishop. We are Catholic, after all, so we always start big things with a mass. And it's our new bishop's first day on the job, so he was nice enough to come over and do the honors . . .

10:30 "Keynote" presentation by Michael Pritchard. I've never heard of this guy before, but he's a somewhat well-known humorist, motivational speaker, comedian, etc. Here's his picture:

Not bad. Had some funny stuff. But it all turned out to be funny stories and sound bytes. I didn't really find anything of real substance in what he had to say. Which, as Corey pointed out tonight, is usually true of motivational speakers. But I have high standards. I want to do that kind of stuff one day, and I want to have something of substance to share . . .

12:30 Dismissed to get our box lunches in the quad, then eat and go home. Since there is never anything good for me in a boxed lunch anymore, I skipped this as well.

2:00 After stopping for lunch on the way home, treated myself to a nice long nap.

Okay, so my issue with the day is that I don't feel like I really did anything today. I honor the fact that the diocese wants to get all the faculty and staff together once in awhile, and that they want to make sure we feel special, and that they would like to give us some inspiration or new tools to help us do our jobs better. But I didn't really feel like I got any of that today. Sure, Michael Pritchard was entertaining. But that was all, really.

And as much as I enjoyed my nap, I would have rather spent the time going through some kind of team-building exercises with my colleagues. (My department chair refers to our school as a pirate ship, and I'm starting to see why -- lots of mercenaries, but no real sense of team.)

So I guess I feel a little like my day was wasted in that sense. Maybe it would serve me well to relay these thoughts to the administration . . .

Posted: Fri - October 3, 2003 at 11:58 PM

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Faculty Inservice Day

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