IB Pissed

I don’t know about you, but sometimes professional conferences are a pain in my considerable behind. Today’s is no exception. I’m at a gorgeous beach resort–no complaints there–with nice food and a room that’s about a hundred feet from the Gulf of Mexico. Fine. Dandy.

What’s not fine, or even approaching dandy, is the veritable avalanche of paper I got this morning, all badly organized and comb-bound, which makes it impossible to reorganize. Top that all off with a room full of people from rank beginners (moi) to twenty-year-plus veterans, and you have a recipe for a very confused room. Especially in my seat.

The situation: I’ll be teaching the first year of an IB course this fall. I come to get teaching strategies and make sure I’m on the right path to help my students do well. Within the first half hour, I’m unsure I’m in the right place, thanks to the aforementioned mix in the room, and then I discover that the syllabus I submitted, which I thought had been vetted and approved, was wrong. As in “violates the rules and would disqualify my students’ scores” wrong. How the hell did it pass muster, then??

Let’s just say I’m never–never–the dumbest girl in the room. This morning, though, I sure felt like it. And I was. Not. Happy. At. All. Pitch a fit not happy and embarrass myself in front of everyone, which made me even less happy. This is the kind of thing that gives teachers chronic headaches. Good thing I have the beach to stare at.