Beginning of the Year Training

Sigh... it is that time of year.  We must bid farewell to summer and look towards the beginning of school!

This summer the school district I work for has adopted the Reading Mastery series for all elementary schools.  This means that we were asked to spend 2 days prior to the start of teacher in-service days for training.  Now, this doesn't really bother me but there are 3 things you should know:

1.  I have taught Reading Mastery before, 6 years to be exact.

2.  I was trained as a trainer for Reading Mastery at the National Direct Instruction Conference
and....

3.  I was told I had to sit in this two day training to learn how to use Reading Mastery.

Sitting in a training for a program you are already proficient in was interesting.  I sat in the back to take it all in.  I saw that the presenters were very quickly losing some people.  If you are not familiar with Reading Mastery, it is a very scripted reading program with lots of signals and certain ways of doing things.  Teachers were starting to revolt!  I had let the presenters know ahead of time that I had experience with the program and trainings so if they needed any real world experience they could tap into me.  I'm not sure how helpful my comments were but after a while people started to settle down. 

As with any new program, there is angst.  It was somewhat comforting to know that I have already traveled this road and survived!  Since this is new to the district, there are still questions to be asked and answered.  I am hoping to be able to be able to participate as a trainer with follow up trainings.  There will be many issues and kinks along the way this year and I hope that there will be more good than bad that comes out of this.  My biggest fear is that teachers will not use this program with fidelity because it is very different from what they have used before.  I have seen it work for kids and hope that teachers give it a shot and put forth the effort to learn the program. 

So... tomorrow is day two of training... I wonder what fun will be had?  :)

Till next time...