Thanks to the Washington Post’s Valerie Strauss, this video of Chicago Public School ISAT preparation and Professional Development has gone viral.
This presenter was one of several consultants flown in from California and the United Kingdom for the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Strategic School Support Services’ special network. This is a professional development for teachers of Saturday ISAT [Illinois Standards Achievement Test] preparation classes.
Frankly, although it is teacher professional development at its worse, it is only the extreme version of what I experienced more often than not for 30 years.
Teacher professional development on crack.
Fred Klonsky 
“…most men and women will grow up to love their servitude and will never dream of revolution.” Brave New World… Aldous Huxley…
A cult meeting?
This is what happens when you run schools like a business. All humanity is removed and you end up with jingoism and product development/brainwashing.
You’ve got to be kidding me! The CPS flew someone in and paid them for this!!!!!
“It’s all about the kids!”
How can I get on this gravy train?
Meanwhile over in the private schools, kids are learning about apposition in writing lab courses, which is how you do it, rather than this Nazi compliance thing going on in CPS teacher training.
Sure feels like there’s an ICK factor here–it’s hard to watch. What an insult to educators everywhere and CPS specifically. Makes me wonder, in addition to CPS administrators, do our state legislators view us in the same way–puppets/robots that parrot things that they’re told? If so, then that may explain why our legislators have taken the legislative liberties they have with us. Bet they wouldn’t pull the same stuff with doctors or lawyers. No amount of professional development credit is worth having one’s intelligence demeaned. Makes me wonder if CPS can afford to put on a show like this, just how bad off are their finances really?
Perhaps this trainer is modeling teaching techniques. In which case, I would say this isn’t appropriate for First Graders, either.
Good grief, are teachers presumed to be unintelligent? Who planned this kindergarten level inservice?
What a horror. . . I wouldn’t do this to a kindergarten class. . . it’s frightening this even took place What an insult to all teachers and students.
This reminds me of a show I saw not long ago about some charter at which students clap, repeat, snap fingers, and their eyes never leave the teacher. Never did an original thought surface during the lesson shown. This method was held up as being a major success when dealing with students who couldn’t behave, attend, or meet the standards in a “regular” classroom. It nauseated me. It nauseates me more to see professional educators required to respond to this demeaning example of “teaching.” Besides being a teacher, I hold another Master’s Degree in Human Resource Development, and this isn’t the way that adults learn best!
By the way, I have observed the finger snapping, rote responses, and clapping being used in a classroom in the upper middle class district where I work. 1984 is alive and kicking in a suburb of Chicago.
Although it’s a view from the back if you look at the body language of those “students”…this is pure torture. I was one of six people in charge of our district Comprehensive School Reform and spent quite a bit of time in Washington D.C. watching workshop seminars like this. I came away with two thoughts: 1) These people make big bucks with these consulting presentations…It’s a great gig. Put together a 45-minute presentation and you have a new career; and 2) this has become a cottage industry of its own…people now make a career out of telling others how to teach, even though they haven’t been in a classroom in many years and/or probably taught only a few years…”The classroom is just too much work.” It’s things like this that I consider to be nothing but “HMOs for schools.” Money wasted because it’s never spent on direct instruction for the kids. Truthfully, it’s scandalous.
How many fingers do you see…now?
Skinner box is next?
Teacher leave those Teachers alone…?
Eat your meat?