Reasons I Can’t Attend That Meeting

by TeachThought Staff

“I can’t wait to get to that staff meeting and improve my own craft and the learning of my students” said the teacher in the alternate and symmetrical universe.

We’re pretty hard on meetings here, mainly because we’ve been to so many that have been not just wastes of time, but actually hurtful to teaching and learning. Even the administrators know this–stinks for them, too. “It’s district policy because it’s state law because blahblahblahblah because blah.”

In fairness, some are actually useful. There are indeed times where gathering together in the same room, whether as a district, school, department, grade level, team, or other more minor gathering of pedagogical agents of glory. But usually that’s not the case, right? So skip it–but you need a reason. Why can’t you attend–why exactly? What specific reason can you give that’s actually true?

You might find one of these useful. If not, sorry. We tried.

I’m Busy Teaching! 28 Reasons I Can’t Attend That Meeting

1. I’m reading a book to help me rethink assessment.
2. I’m tweeting during a twitter chat with my PLN.
3. I’m getting data together for the next meeting. And the last one.
4. I’m on Google Drive responding to student writing in real-time.
5. I’m trying to fix the WiFi.
6. I’m reconciling the district definition of standards-based grading with what we were told at the last meeting, what I read on TeachThought, and what I heard on the TED Talk last week.
7. I’m frontloading.
8. I’m teaching.
9. I’m reteaching.
10. I’m reteaching the frontloading, which is making my head explode.
11. I’m trying to read the book the principal gave us last semester for the book study we never ended up having.
12. I’m arranging a Skype with a class in Dubai to culminate our recent project.
13. I’m grading 374 on-demand papers that are going to tell me what I already know.
14. I’m still looking for that data.
15. I’m finding a password, probably. Or resetting one.
16. I’m coaching a practice/planning a play/ hosting detention/staying inspired.
17. I’m having a conversation about an email prefacing a meeting that could’ve been a tweet.
18. I’m responding to an intervention, and damn it feels good.
19. I’m finding a student a coat/deodorant/money for lunch without anyone in the class noticing.
20. I’m heading for a DPLC in lieu of a SPLC after this ARC to create an IEP so that RTI is not MIA.
21. I’m trying to decide between self-directed learning and project-based learning for our end-of-the-year unit.
22. I’m researching digital citizenship frameworks (yes that’s a thing, and yes there are more than one).
23. I’m reading my observation notes from the most recent walkthrough and ran out of tissues and now need more tissues.
24. I’m trying to figure out which of these literacy apps has adaptive learning algorithms and which do not.
25. I’m trying to honor the technology committee’s ‘initiatives’ with ‘fidelity’ and your meeting would keep me from getting that done.
26. I’m finding new ways to express my hate for the word ‘data.’
27. I’m trying to make sense of YouTube’s constantly changing copyright laws so that when I show this video I don’t get scolded by the librarian or sued by pewdiepie.
28. I’m still trying to fix the WiFi.

I’m Busy Teaching! 28 Reasons I Can’t Attend That Meeting; image attribution flickr user vancouverfilmschool