By: Chloe Ho; Staff Writer
TPD: teacher professional development.
For students, these are sporadic Mondays off or shortened days of school; a time for them to unwind and relax, or catch up on school work. For teachers, it can be assumed that it’s a much more exhausting situation: showing up to school, without the students they so enjoy teaching, and enduring a full-length day of professional training. It’s without a doubt that these teachers work so hard every single day in order to provide us the best educational experience we can have –even working while we have a break to ensure that the environment we are learning in is safe and comfortable for us all. But what does a typical TPD day look like for staff?
February 28. The wellness room, located next to the career center, was littered with sleeping bags, colorful stuffed animals, and crumbs of a variety of snacks scattered throughout. Lounging around were teachers (to be kept anonymous) cuddling and occasionally looking over to the screen, which was playing The Princess Diaries (2001).
One excitedly watched a teacher walk in and giggled, telling their peers to not be obvious when looking their way, to which they looked in the most obvious way. As the rest of their colleagues entered the room, dressed in brightly colored pajamas and cute animal slippers, they supplied the room with fluffy cushions and draped thin blankets around each other as they began chatting and catching up with each other on their lives.
Some remarked that the movie should be changed to Clue (1985) or maybe a TV show instead because “Princess Diaries is for babies”. However, this offended some, who refuted that Clue “is not school-friendly” and “might give me bad dreams”. After a few minutes of (healthy) argument, they all collectively agreed to scroll Netflix for something that might suit everyone’s tastes.
Once something was found and began to play, a few teachers had already begun to become disinterested and migrated off to the corner to draw over the existing chalk drawings on the board. Some drew mustaches on the “weird anime boys”, and others simply wrote long, emotional poems to recite the deep grievances and unanswered questions they’d buried in the back of their minds. In their etchings on the black board smeared with the remnants of old chalk markings, years worth of pondering and the irritation they received from how little knowledge they had of the world poured out with bits of chalk falling to the floor. The chalk was whittled down too soon before they could fully express themselves in their train of deep, philosophical thought.
Meanwhile, teachers had grouped together at a foldable table, moved to the back of the room, where they had begun to set up little plastic containers full with colorful jewelry beads, which one proudly declared they’d gotten from Joann’s for half-off for three sets. The group of them decided to make friendship bracelets for the people who couldn’t come with their names spelled with alphabet beads. Unfortunately, there were not enough letters for a few. Some received their names spelled well, such as “Louie” (Economics and Government teacher), “Malatesta” (English teacher), and “Chrastion” (dean of school). Others unfortunately had a different outcome, like “DBos” (DuBois, APES teacher), “Lung” (Leung, English I teacher) and “Tul” (Ms. Tuttle, Food and Nutrition teacher). It is truly heartwarming to see teachers supporting each other, and their hard work will never go unappreciated.
Emotional tears were exchanged between one another as the movie came to an end as they reached the finale of Despicable Me 2 where Gru and Lucy get married and the three girls finally get a mother. A few teachers were reportedly smiling as they wiped their tears, commenting on the beautiful resolution, while others had fallen into a deep slumber, snuggled with a variety of stuffed animals.
After the lights turned back on and the TV turned off, the staff grouped together (excluding the sleeping ones) to play a round of Truth or Dare, which they determined had to be “really juicy this time because last time was boring as heck”. As they began to ask, however, they allegedly could only nervously ask who each other liked. This was not successful at uncovering anything interesting, however, as most of them are married and could only briefly gush over their partners. Most of the dares, besides being dared to run into random rooms in the office or something not particularly interesting, ended up having to be searched up on their phones through “super embarrassing dares for truth or dare” in Safari.
As the day concluded, the room was cleaned thoroughly. The tedious work of picking up little bits of trash made them note how great the janitors of the school were, but it wasn’t long before they were ready to go home after a long day of productive work.
