At least 5 timed in college amd PDs.
How many times were you forced to watch “The Dangers of a Single Story” Tedtalk?
Just Smile and Nod Y'all.They used to constantly play this TEDTalk during my teacher training program in college. All the Pinteresty-type people in the class would adore it, but I always looked at it with my critical thinking cap on (ironic, since the grad school classes always claimed to support using critical thinking...just not on the fluff they used to give us in class 😂), and the conclusion I came to was this:
Ms. Pierson’s TEDTalk is the epitome of teacher martyrdom mentality.
Don’t get me wrong, she makes some great points about giving students a sense of pride and making them feel valued. I completely agree with those parts... but she pretty much claims that you’re a “bad” teacher if you don’t have an amazing personal relationship with every student in your class.
I’m sorry but that’s not only unrealistic, it’s a toxic mentality. She is holding teachers to an impossible standard and implicitly guilting teachers for not being a buddy rather than a mentor. It’s ridiculously incorrect too; I had teachers I used to think were “too strict,” but—looking back as an adult—who I now respect.
And now as a teacher, most students enjoy my classes, but I’ve also had students who disliked me because I enforced school rules or because they disliked my personality...but they still showed demonstrable growth in their learning.
Realistically, whenever you work with large groups of people over many years, some personalities mesh well together and some really don’t. In fact, some kids will dislike you no matter what you do…and that’s okay, as long as you behave as a professional and treat everyone fairly.
But Pierson’s talk tries to guilt teachers for not living up to an unrealistic, unfair, and unhealthy expectation, and in this video she lionized the idea of teachers spending their own money on prizes and supplies for students, as well as spending afternoons doing home visits. This is the exact martyrdom mentality that’s causing mass burnout among teachers. These unreasonable expectations are now touted by too many admins, and this is why the majority of teachers quit the profession within 5 years.
... and yet this is what our grad schools constantly shovel our way when they’re training us, by playing this video ad nauseum.
PS: I always do try to be kind and funny when teaching, and most kids respond very well, but I ultimately behave as a professional and am strict when necessary, and I’ve had a lot of former students thank me.
Wasn't she the one talking about how her parents spent so much of their own money to feed and clothe their students? I got super irritated when my superintendent showed us that. It's not my job to feed and clothe my students. If it is, pay me more.
Home visits? She needs to put down the crack pipe.
This. Times infinite. Will you say it again, please?!
Best PD by a mile was series of book club meetings where the principal reserved a private room at a local restaurant and bought us appetizers (we had to pay for alcohol) and we read "Culturally responsive teaching and the brain" by Zaretta Hammond. I still have her frameworks printed out near the wall by my desk to remind myself that you can be warm and kind and hold people to high standards
Currently reading this and thought it looked like one of those books I’d read a zillion times in my teacher program - I love it though! I’m about halfway through and really appreciate all the context as to how the brain directly impacts it. Like it had the illusion of one of those “no duh, these things should be common sense” books, but I’m finding it really interesting with the brain function connections!
And food and booze are 100% the way to go to make it better. Haha I’ll read whatever if you’re paying me, I get free food, and can order a drink. 😆
I teach HS, never taught elementary but I would guess good for both. I feel like there is repetition of the inclusive / implicit bias / culturally relevant things that at least I had to do a zillion of already, but I feel like what this book sets apart is it talks about scientifically how the brain relates to this. At least from what I’ve read thus far.
If you enjoyed that, I would suggest bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress
This was the central text for my education masters.
Quite good.
Is that the “2/20 is 2 better than before” lady?
I didn’t know she died!
She died very soon after her Ted Talk. She never lived to see her words frt twisted and used to punish teachers
Wanting and being an advocate for the best, on all fronts.
Yes I’ve had to watch that one multiple times already
To piggyback off that- how many times have you had to watch Every Child Needs a Champion? I once had a one-week new teacher academy in which 3 different presenters included it in their slides. Two of them were back-to-back.
We watch this bare minimum twice a year. It's so annoying because we're already...teachers? I'm not there because I hate children. I am already going to do what I can within my working hours to champion each student.
I’ve written this before, but it’s definitely relevant again in this thread:
TEDTalk speaker: You need to be a champion for every student!
Teacher: Great! How do I do that?
TEDTalk speaker: Uh...by building relationships! Always smile!
Teacher: Ok, but what if a student is acting out, disrupting the learning, and being extremely disrespectful?
TEDTalk speaker: Um...Obviously you haven’t tried being kind to them!
Teacher: But I have, and do, every day. But he still acts out. Do you have some concrete classroom management strategies I could use to lead him to improve his behavior?
TEDTalk speaker: Lead him?! Teachers nowadays should be “facilitators”! You should be a “guide on the side,” not a sage onstage!!! Clearly you must be old-fashioned and antiquated!!!!
Teacher: Okay that’s BS, and a total false dichotomy....but what should I do to improve his behavior?
TEDTalk speaker: ...........Um....I, uh.......have you tried building a relationship?
You should be a “guide on the side,” not a sage onstage!!!
Aktualy, you need to be a "meddler in the middle" 🙄
I've been to that PD numerous times.
I've come to learn that this pithy phrase is so damaging even with its best intentions.
When you go on a tour (which is where most adult humans get "classroom style" learning in the outside world), the tour guide functions as a LECTURER. If you had the tourists try to figure that out on their own, it'd be a disaster.
Kids sense when their teacher is a guru. And because of that, they're more likely to trust that the teacher knows what they're talking about.
The only place where "guide on the side, not sage on the stage" ideology works is if you're paying to do an escape room.
As a student, I was always frustrated when there was a substitute, because they could never answer my questions, because they’re not experts. Someone just regurgitating the book is a waste of my time. I was always glad when a history teacher or something could give me context for something, a math teacher could explain why something was done a certain way, a science teacher could explain some related concept that makes the original clearer. If I’m just supposed to figure everything out on my own, why would I even bother going to school?
I read that one part , just for a millisecond, , as "obviously you haven't tried killing them," and my brain was like WTH sub am I on 🤣
This is hilarious in a dystopian way
Never seen that Dangers of a Single Story one but I’ve seen that Every Child Needs a Champion multiple times.
I’ll add one more: Do Schools Kill Creativity by Ken Robinson. I really disliked this one as well. I later heard Ken Robinson speak in a more long form format later on that was much more palatable but I can’t watch his Ted Talk.
I HATE this TedTalk with a passion.
All he does is ramble for 20 minutes, repeating the same tired jokes and stories we’ve heard a million times, and then doesn’t offer any potential solutions whatsoever.
My principal had us watch this with the preface “I don’t think most of this applies to our school, but it’s good food for thought”. I wanted to flip tables.
“I don’t think most of this applies to our school, but I need to pad out the runtime on this meeting"
Next time instead of "food for thought", can we have "liquor for sanity"?
All I can think when I hear the Every Child Needs A Champion talk is how her parents REALLY needed to set boundaries.
How much more time did you spend learning about Piaget than learning to teach reading, writing or math?
Piaget is great and all, but maybe the first year wouldn’t be such a baptism by fire if we spent more time on teaching methods.
Interesting! My school didn’t do any of that. We wasted all our time on Kagan
Kagan, or at least the structured approach to groupwork, should be a unit in a course.
But I agree, that way way to much time is spent on it in education PD or courses.
Freaking Piaget drives me crazy. It doesn't even apply to the children anymore. It's antiquated.
In retrospect I felt that Vigotsky was really all we needed in terms of heavy theory. Then maybe some language learning theory, and that’s about it.
Maybe one course full of that, and if being generous then one other course for the equity theory (where we get the pedagogy of the oppressed and what not). The rest of the time should be all practical stuff.
Sounds very much like my experience with this video. The first time I loved it, after that I realized it was just the tool of brain washing.
I do love the message, but I think that all of us already go in with the heart postured toward championing kids. We need PD to tell us how to do that effectively within the broken system. And nobody has managed that in my experience.
Or the “Know your Why” video of the comedian and the dude singing.
I’m so tired of that one
Is that the "what I make? I make a GODDAMN DIFFERENCE!" one?
I could recite that from memory by now.
Dangers of a Single Story: 3 times, and then at one point I forced my all my 9th graders (5 classes) to watch part of it as a Socratic Seminar (because I'm evil, but also it was relevant to our novel study unit theme and the PLC decided on it together)
Every Child Needs a Champion? I've lost count. A regrettable number of times. It's ridiculous. At least 10.
What kills me about this one is Rita Hayworth died a few months after she gave the talk. Let the poor woman rest!
rita hayworth died in 1987… rita pierson is who you are thinking of😂
You are correct! 🫠
Never got this one!
This is actually the cornerstone of my districts years-long campaign. groan
Nothing is even close to as bad as the freaking potato bar video. I've seen it six times at six Pds. It is good, but like, not THAT good
You're right. We have watched Rita Pierson multiple times. I wonder if it'll happen again this year. The clip is 11 years old because it was made right before she passed.
We were shown "Dead Poets Society" as an example of a dangerous teacher.
Are you shitting me? That movie is why I became an English teacher.
Seriously, one of my favorite movies of all time! I am all about teaching passion for the power of words.
This subreddit sometimes has a frustrating tendency to hate teacher movies, as u/Remarkable-Cream4544 mentions. I think the subreddit dislikes the fact that the teachers in a lot of these movies become martyrs and sacrifice their personal lives for their careers.
But I generally love teacher movies! I don’t take them as instruction manuals (although there are sometimes good ideas that can work in certain situations), but take them as entertainment and inspiration.
For instance, I would never want to sacrifice my personal life the way Erin Gruwell did in “Freedom Writers,” but I definitely am inspired by the movie’s theme of using frequent writing as a tool to help students’ learning.
The only teacher movie I watch is The Substitute.
Haha I LOVE those movies! The original with Tom Berenger and the sequels with Treat Williams (RIP) are all so fun!
It’s like the movies take the classic 1980’s/90’s teacher movie story of “cool teacher goes to an out-of-control school and gains the students’ respect” but adds the twist of “what if the teacher was a retired Special Forces/mercenary” and let the madness go from there! 😂
It’s like the Substitute movies go back and forth from scene to scene on being a classic teacher movie and being an action movie, and back and forth from drama to comedy and back. 🤣
I was posting sarcastically, though I'm realizing I may not have been extreme enough on that. I too love teacher movies. I find it hilarious how much people here freak out of them. Says so much about them and their willingness to work beyond the norm.
Oh I knew you were posting sarcastically, I’m sorry if my post made it sound like I was lumping you in with the guys here who say that stuff, it wasn’t my intention!
But yeah I completely agree with you. As much as I love this subreddit’s support for healthy work/life boundaries and balance, A LOT of people here take it to the opposite extreme and act like it’s wrong to have any enthusiasm for the job whatsoever, and if you actually enjoy this career then you’re somehow a traitor. 😂
I maintain healthy work/life balance but I also take a lot of pride in doing a great job as a teacher and the difference we make in people’s lives.
Agreed, people treat every teacher movie as an automatic migroaggression.
Don't say that here. Movie teachers are all evil, self-serving, white-saviors.
Are you still a white savior if all the kids are white too? I mean, we're not talking Dangerous Minds here
I'd say the trope still applies, it's just more a matter of social class and expectations than racial groupings.
My movie teacher role model was Dewey Finn. 🎸
Let’s👆rock🖕lets👆rock🖕today🤘
Mine was Kotter haha
Some of the Sweathogs are my favorite each year!
I taught remedial English for about three years and while I grew to love my “Sweathogs” — I called them that as a term of endearment even though they didn’t get the reference — I had to tap out because the stress and secondary trauma was too much for me that early in my career. Even so, 23 years teaching, I am convinced the scheduling admin purposely sends me the roughest and toughest every year. I am grateful.
This answer rocks
Rock on
Mine is the one from best beast of the southern wild.
Damn, sounds like they missed the whole point of the movie 💀
If someone showed my “Farewell Mr. Bunting” instead of Dead Poets, that would be a good indicator that I was sitting in the best PD session ever.
As long as the teacher is literally Robin Williams himself, then they're a gem.
My admin is addicted to "What's Your Why?: Amazing Grace guy".
Pay. My why is a paycheck.
If anyone gives a different answer, offer to take their paycheck off their hands so they can work for only their Why.
Yes. I kept thinking: I do sing that way on pay day.
I have some to sincerely hate that video.
Easy for admin to remember their "why" when they get paid a lot to do very little.
Not as much as that Ken Robinson speech about schools killing creativity.
This one I’ve seen at least 3 times, between college professors and administrators.
We watched that every year for at least 5 years! I must say that I do love him, and I read his book, and was sad to see that he passed away.
Four, I believe.
Honestly, as TED Talks go, it's a good one. I love Adichie. But the rehashed curriculum is really the only thing that makes me resent PD. (Okay, the way presenters treat us like a bunch of middle schoolers with the attention spans of gnats doesn't help either.) If the classes were useful and varied I'd have no issue with it. Instead we just watch and read the same damn things (the Nacirema study comes to mind...) and get dragged through the same superficial conversations. Sigh.
At least once a year since it came out and again last week in a graduate course. You're spot on with your summary of PD! New admin rotate through almost yearly, and each one thinks they're giving us a groundbreaking PD experience by busting out a 15 year old video.
Ugh god not the Nacirema. They could at least do to make a 21st century version lol
I loved Adichie too until I found out she’s a TERF :(
She's really not.
Oh lord don't even get me STARTED on that one
This one is so overused. Maybe their parents should go to jail for child neglect
At least three, which is less than half the number of times I’ve seen Brené Brown explain empathy.
I cannot stand Brown.
Danger of a Single Story is a fantastic TED Talk and I will hear no slander of it. I will accept watching this talk over any other PD activity.
I was only ever assigned to watch it once, but I find a way to fit it into almost every one of my English classes!
I had never seen it until I saw this post. It's wonderful!
“Single story” at least thrice. I’ve also been in some classrooms using it with their class.
There’s another one that ends with “and that little boy…. Was my son.” Idk the title but I’ve also seen that one a handful of times
I love this Ted Talk, and think it teaches some important lessons. I also absolutely love the speaker, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, because I think she is an amazing author. But yeah, it is overused and overplayed. I have been tasked to watch it probably 5 times. I won't say forced because I do like this Ted Talk.
I've never been forced to watch it by admin but I have forced my students to watch it when studying Africa in Geography so I've seen it many many times.
I show it to my classes at the beginning of each school year for history.
I used it as the launch to our unit on Night by Elie Weisel.
Lmao I have actually used it in my geography classes as an intro to Human Geography in the region….
….in large part because I have freshman who are dumb af about the world and was already dealing with the boys doing their best South Park clicking noises about Africa at the start of class.
So while for us educators sure it’s telling us what we already know, but I feel I needed to show something relatively brief to a bunch of 14 year olds who are acting as ignorant assholes in Trump Country. I like the idea someone mentioned here that it might be a good into to Human Geography concepts at the start of the year and not just specific to a region’s studies.
I had to teach it in my English class too 😂
The one I hope I never hear again is the story of the kid whose mom dies and he gives the teacher her perfume and dear god do you really think you’re the first assistant superintendent to tell us this fucking story
I just don’t want to see Kid President anymore.
I hated that kid when I was a kid when it came Out and abhor it now.
I hate to say it but you just can’t understand what he is saying.
I masochistically just looked it up because I'd never seen it. What tripe.
I left a scathing comment pointing out the hypocrisy/irony of using it so many times. It’s since been changed. Idk if my comment had anything to do with it but I like to think it did
Lol
At least 5 now. That and the “every kid needs a champion” video.
The one I've become sick of is the kid fiddling with his pencil and the teacher giving him drumsticks. It's a great story and everything but I've just been forced to watch it too many times.
Not sure if it's the same one, but I've seen the one with the black teacher who if I recall correctly, lied to her to her class saying they were the best class in the school. I've seen that one a few times. (RIP to that lady though)
Never in PD or anything...but I show it to my seniors every year before we start our first memoir, A Long Way Gone. We reference it again when we read Persepolis.
I think it's so important for these kids to realize there is an entire world outside of their very rural town.
I really like the Brain of a Procrastonater talk. I always show it to my high school students at the beginning of the year.
What about the one where the gorilla is passing in the middle of the children passing the ball? Drives me crazy that we are supposed to have missed that
They don't eat APPLES in Nigeria. They eat MANGOES.
Never
I've never seen this one - is it worth my time?
Yes, it absolutely is!
Yeah, it's good! She talks about prejudice in a very relatable way.
Same, never seen it.
I’ve been forced to watch it since I was in high school so I’ve seen it like 20 times no joke
Not as many as Did You Know?, even years after the stats were out of date.
Feeling attacked as I show this to my freshmen. 😭
At least 5, but I still enjoy it.
I think “Leading with Lollipops” is my go-to for an inspirational, teacher-y (though maybe not explicitly) TED talk. Never gets old for me and I almost never see it used.
We watched this one at a leadership cohort I was a part of, and I loved it. It’s one I wouldn’t mind rewatching!
“We've made leadership about changing the world. And there is no world - there's only six billion understandings of it. And if you change one person's understanding of it, one person's understanding of what they're capable of, one person's understanding of how much people care about them, one person's understanding of how powerful an agent for change they can be in this world, you change the whole thing.”
What about the scene from finding nemo where all the fish work together to break the crane arm? Or the scene where the HS football player has to close his eyes and crawl (he thinks its 20, but its really 50) yards? seen both of those many, many times.
I've seen that clip from Facing the Giants more times that I can count. Ugh.
My admin decided to do “ Who’s On First?” I don’t know why , but it was a good day.
Too many. It’s a favorite amongst the one trick ponies my district likes to waste their money on.
They could be funding transportation for intervention services before or after school hours, but that would actually help the students rather than line the pockets of admin’s friends.
I watched this in college once and it honestly changed my life.
How many times were you forced to listen to the Sandy Hook call?
My first year teaching we had to listen to calls and watch videos from different tragedies. It was awful.
One teacher spoke up and basically said “how many times must we be forced to listen to this call?” Like, we just have to deal with gun violence? Okay. Cool.
If you're looking for a good educational TED Talk that doesn't make you want to rip your eyeballs out I recommend looking up Linda Wayman who is the principal of Strawberry Mansion High School known as "the most dangerous school in america" as well as a council member for her school board she truly loves her students and wants to see them be the best they can be regardless
Here is her tedtalk: https://youtu.be/Xe2nlti47kA?si=O_YwHzYLVKHF1Qnm
I start off each year with my seniors with danger of a single story—great rhetoric, a lovely way to analyze marginalization of the many different groups and people we’ll learn about throughout the year, and also manages to tie in the concept of narrative (I teach English).
Edit to add: I use the uncharted territory text, and usually end up following DoaSS with an excerpt about the Radium Girls, then the poem Power by Adrienne Rich, finishing with a study on the Native American people vs the “Western Hero” cowboy archetype. We read Louise Erdrich’s poem Dear John Wayne, and compare Rich’s and Erdrich’s poems.
Never heard of it before but it looks like a powerful talk.
At least once. And my district uses EL which in module 1, all they hear about is kids in poor countries that have unique ways they get access to books.
I've been teaching for 20+ years and I don't know what that is.
I don’t remember which Ted talk it was but it’s a lady wearing red talking about how there’s going to be one kid who gets on your last nerve but they are never absent
Rita Pierson (RIP).
This is news to me. Never seen it.
Same
You should watch it and tell me about it so I don't have to.
I just watched it today it was assigned for my second masters program, that’s hilarious.
Never. At least not that I paid any attention to or remember.
I’ve never seen anything about single story. I think I have every child needs a champion memorized though.
I have seen the "What are you sinking about?" German coast guard commercial about 10 times at PDs.
As I tell the first years, I’m not here to be inspirational, I’m not here to change anyone’s life, I’m not here to be a father figure, I’m here to give these kids a high quality education and make them smarter than when they got to me.
Wait, you guys have PD that’s not just admin reading the slides to you?!
I love this video actually. I had my high schoolers watch it back in 2016 when I started teaching.
All right folks! 27 years of experience talking. Get ready for the great upheaval. Thanks to No Child Left Behind and STEM we created a world where children with the worst kind of defecits had to be “college and Career” ready. Covid killed that in so many ways.
We’re going to return to the 1960’s with motorheads, greasers, hairdressers, carpenters, bakers,and in a more modern mode computer repair kids, get a technical degree or something like it.
Military recruitment is at a record low. So be prepared for all kinds of new classes and diplomas that get kids through in the old fashioned way.
It’s like nobody ever saw fucking “Grease”
Omg, I'm a student teacher mentor and they shoved this down our throat. The student teaching program was such a joke and did the most cliche professional development.
Mine was the Harry Wong program that anyone with a few years teaching expedient could have taught.
I shall be honest, I don't think I remember that one. But PD videos tend to blend into each other after a while. There was one a few years ago I watched about trauma and how to work with students. They went into detail about some stuff that made it impossible to sit through, and I had to leave the presentation. (It brought up my own feelings of helplessness and the trauma I experienced in school as a girl miss diagnosed with ADHD/bi-polar (actually ADHD/ASD) and how I was treated by peers and some teachers.
Other than that, there's the one clip from that Christian movie with the football player who crawls the field with a kid on his back. They used to use that one every year.
Idk which it is but it’s the black lady who talks about tough kids and how the tough ones are never sick.
Seen that 20 times in 8 years. I’ve kept count.
Rita Pierson (RIP).
Tedtalks ughhh. I loved paying for university to have me watch tedtalks and post discussions about it. So educating.
Lol! Since 2016? At least 10.
At least two or three times...
I had to write at least two papers about or using that Ted talk in college.
So far twice, lol. It's a pretty good Ted Talk, but I can imagine being done with it after one or two times :P
I think I have it memorized.
Edit: actually, someone give me a quiz question. I promise I won’t look up any answers.
Twice in high school and once while getting my masters. None at PDs but the number of times I’ve had to watch the “you can do hard things” basketball pep talk since starting teaching 😵💫😵💫
I taught Gen. fresh English for 7 years x 3 sections = 21 + honors juniors for 1 year (we dumped it year 2) x 3 = 24 + 2 years where we used it for Gen Soph x 2 = 28
Hahahaha, I made my 8th graders watch it this year.
What about the LRE propaganda film, Educating Peter
I understand the dad making that film but it still pisses me off.
It's part of the CSU/UC System's ERWC curriculum for 11th grade. So I've seen it a minimum of 10 times in the past 3 years. I've lost track of how many times I've read the transcript.
Zero. But now that I’ve seen this post it will likely be every year from now on.
At least 90
Zero.
Teachers should have to watch “Election” as a reality check before starting
This made me think of that one Sandy Hook promise video where you're following a like teen love story and in the background are signs about a school shooting
And I think by now that video has come up a dozen times in various trainings or meetings.
Tf is that? We do have to do the mfin Keenan and Associates training every year though.
Once in 11th grade. A student casually mentioned having seen it in another class, and my teacher got interested, watched it, and assigned us a question about it on the final.
I think I only actually saw it once and it was in a modern African history course I actually liked it in the sense of teaching history. I like it because it’s all about giving people different stories.
Once in PD. Never really in school though. It's a good story by an interesting person, even if it is overplayed.
You people wouldn’t be so bitter if you just Made Your Bed Every Morning. /s
Twice. What exactly do we replace a single story with?
Anarchist Pedagogy. It’s a real thing … go look it up.
I’m all for developing a child’s sense of autonomy within developmental limits. Not one for the politics of Anarchism but strong labour practices are cool by me.
Context clues
I have admins shovel this shit down my throat multiple times a year... then the same admins have the audacity to tell teachers to be more creative with their lesson plans.
The less said about this, the better.
The way I see it, after looking at comments a bit, if I have taught for 18 years, have a Bachelor's in early childhood education (plus associates in studio art and 10 years total of formal education), have helped numerous non-verbal children begin speaking, have studied and trained in topics outside of ECE and brought my knowledge into the classroom, excellent at classroom arrangement and behavior management, have mentored new teachers throughout my career..... Why do I need professional development? I could be wrong here but I'm pretty sure I'm professionally developed.
So no, I don't want to watch some stupid video that's telling me how to do something I already know how to do. I mean damn, if I didn't know how to champion kids, I wouldn't have non-verbal students become verbal, or go on to be an aeronautical engineer for NASA (yes, one of my students straight up accomplished that a couple years ago).
I've never heard of it.
I’m at at least 7
"what do you make?"
Never heard of that one. 🤷♂️
Never heard of it. I taught over 30 years...
Omg i watched this in college last semester😭
I’ll take any TedTalk over being shown one of those sappy Thai insurance commercials
Link please
2 missing replies
For me it was the Rita Pierson "every child deserves a champion" Ted talk about building relationships .
I maintain she's spinning in her grave to see her words twisted into admin excusing every bad behavior.
Rita never said lower your standards or accept bad behavior.