Continuing Professional Ennuiment

Here's the thing. All us teachers in FE and HE have to do at least 30 hours continuing professional development every year so that we can keep our wizened and often nicotine stained fingers on the pulse of our specialist areas. Because I work in teacher education my specialist area is no longer interesting things like History (which is essentially everything that ever happened anywhere so can't possibly be dull before you say that) but things to do with teaching.

It's not often that CPD opportunities catch my eye but an e mail came round the other day for an all day training event. I wouldn't have given it a second thought but the subject of the e mail was 'Teaching without Learning'. I've seen enough classes in my role as observer to know that this is one CPD event very few teachers need. I looked further and saw that it should have been 'Teaching without Talking'. I have to confess to in class verbosity so this appealed and I duly signed up.

I had to leave early though. The bloke who ran the session was amiable, knowledgeable and enthusiastic but, crucially, he rarely shut up.

Next week I am running a workshop: 'Teaching without Irony'.