Had another of those annoying in-service thingys yesterday. Half of it was a major waste of time, but half of it wasn’t too bad. Of course I found it irritating anyway, for the simple reason that yes, I fully believe the education and well-being of my students is the most important thing, and I’m perfectly willing to learn how to support them effectively. But I can’t just “drop everything” to help a student who needs it–then my silly meaningless paperwork won’t get done–seriously, do you have any idea how many crises the average 13yo can come up with in a day?–and if my meaningless paperwork doesn’t get turned in to the anonymous paper-shufflers downtown, I’m the one in trouble.
Anyway. We had this in-service, and they talked about assets that kids have. The more assets, the more likely to succeed in school and in life. Okay, makes sense so far. The assets are things like a parent actively involved, tolerance for differences, reading for pleasure, someone besides a parent to go to for advice, if your neighbors watch out for you, if your school expects a lot from you.
There were forty assets. We were asked to think of ourselves at fifteen, and write down how many we had. I had to laugh. I was at the bottom of the barrel, at thirteen. One of my co-workers joked it’s a miracle I’m not in jail.
Yeah, I’ll take the credit for that. 😀