I surrender

If you are an educator no doubt you have had to endure many hours of in-service training. We had ours yesterday. On a day already crowded with grading and prepping, the five people in my department dropped everything and scurried down to our main campus 20 miles south on I-205, where we were treated to a taco bar (I abstained—no corn, no dairy, no wheat, no sugar, no fun), followed by three hours of butt-numbing "workshops" designed to improve our ability to teach.

First up, what to do when a student brings a gun to school. Yep, knowing how to handle that problem would definitely improve my ability to teach. In fact, it might improve me right out the door. I used to think such a thing could never happen at our school, but in reality, it has happened. A gun made it as far as a parking lot. Knives have made it into the hallways. Now that I am more familiar with the for-profit education world, I can understand why students feel the need to resort to violence to make their point. "What do you mean you don't have my financial aid check? Maybe this big KNIFE will help you to find it!"

OK, so now I'm informed about what to do if students get violent. What do we do if they suddenly keel over from a heart attack? Apparently nothing, unless we are trained to use the shock machine. And even if we are, we'd sure better get it right—no hiding behind the Good Samaritan law on this one. If you are trained to use the AED and you screw it up, you can kiss your ass good-bye, apparently. As in major lawsuit coming your way. I had no idea. Guess I'll think twice about helping someone in trouble. And I'm sure if I'm the one who keels over, I'll be turning blue waiting for the paramedics, because my colleagues sure won't be hurrying to help.

The next workshop was a gripe session about our low-down, cheating, plagiarizing students (the pesky scamps). The questions we must ask: Did they know they were plagiarizing? Have they done it before? And should we kick their sorry-ass souls out the door? In this age of the disappearing college student, I can just hear upper management cringing at the thought of letting a live one slip through their fingers. "Surely you can rehabilitate this habitual cheater!" they will cry.

With each new plagiarist exposed, we get angrier and angrier, feeling more and more maligned and disrespected. But we should remember it is not about us. Hell, if I were an adult student—hey, wait a minute, I am!—I mean, if I were a person of less integrity (ahem), I might succumb to the pressure of allowing my smarter classmate to share her paper with me. I might brag about the great speech I wrote without revealing that I stole it off the Internet. I might be tempted to let my 5th-grader do my math homework for me. The burden of being alive is sometimes overwhelming. I wish I could cheat sometimes. I wish I could hire someone else to live my life for me. I surrender, I submit, I give up.

And finally, in the third workshop, we were regaled by the lecture from the sage on the stage, the instructor most intoxicated with the sound of his own verbiage, who absolutely had to share with us in a loud and passionate voice his new discovery: groups! He has discovered the wonders of having his students work in groups! Eureka, it is a miracle! And he proceeded to tell us not only what happened when he sorted the students into groups, but made us watch PowerPoints of each group's presentation. Was I the only one who surreptitiously sneaked in one earbud so I could listen to my mp3 player?

After we were sufficiently bludgeoned into being better teachers, we stumbled out into the rain and drove back to our shabby campus, where we frantically resumed our grading and prepping. New start on Monday, a handful of new students to "teach." What will I be teaching them? Don't bring your weapon to school. Don't cheat. And get used to group projects, because after day one, I'm not saying another word.