ELA Teachers are the WORST

We English Teachers, as a whole, do not do our profession particularly proud when it comes to putting on conferences or creating publications for our peers. Now, I of course only speak for the English Teachers in my Province, but it's a fact that our ELA teachers don't exactly rock the professional development realm. 

Listen. I understand that being an English teacher is busy.  In fact, come to think of it, perhaps it's the gross quantity of paper we deal with everyday that creates the chaos in all our other professional endeavours. The tears of futility and disappointment we shed over each 5 page essay shamelessly brutalizing the English language; the bitter taste of failure we swallow with each short story (the size, somehow, of a small novella) which seems to be written in some kind of Pig-Latin. 

Perhaps the sheer time and energy of marking the many many MANY things we mark simply drains us of all our ambition and creative power. Maybe it sucks us dry of the desire to do right by our colleagues. But I just know that every time I attend a conference organized by our province's association of English teachers, and every time I pick up that association's publication, I find myself astonished at how poorly we manage to do the very things we teach our students.

For instance, our association's magazine is always the WORST.   The design looks like something thrown together on Microsoft Publisher (like, a version from the late 1990s), and the plethora of fonts seem to be modeled, roughly, on the drop-down font style menu in Microsoft Word. (Ahhh... that's what Baskerville Oldface looks like!) The margins, spacing, and title placement are all different on each document, making me wonder: did each contributor type up their article, print it off at home, and bring it in for stapling and photocopying? 

We are supposed to be teaching, among the many other things, the importance of a professional, finished product. If we are doing our jobs, no student would EVER produce anything nearly as horrendous as our own association's publication - done by educators. That's embarrassing. 

Our conferences are no better. While some other association's conferences (like math or science) have meticulously designed handouts, carefully planned lunches, and an organized system of signing up for sessions and then being admitted into the session for which you signed up, OUR conferences seem to be put together haphazardly. YES, you can sign up - but surprise! It's actually rush seating! And we seem to cancel sessions on a whim - no notice necessary!  Not to mention the fact that we don't ever offer any lunch and the snacks consist of juice and donuts (I do appreciate the donuts, just not the 10 block walk to a restaurant, or the parking gamble, where I drive and then lose my hard-fought parking space.)

Now, I realize I seem to do a lot of complaining for someone who has not yet volunteered to serve on any English committee, to write for our association's publication, to organize our conferences.  I know. But it doesn't mean that it's not true. Besides, how can I volunteer? I'm too busy marking the latest atrocities to the English language.

Oh, and complaining.