Still working on the next installment of the Adventures of Gonj & Duby, but in the meantime, enjoy this diversion.  The words are direct quotes from the trainings in 2008 and the rest are my sarcastic rebutals, but the drawings are from copying the caricature style from Mad Magazines.

Capturing Kid’s Hearts:  The Social Contract was a document that you were supposed to put up, with all of your classroom expectations…basically the rules for your class.  You were supposed to make the students think that they were coming up with the rules, and the thought was if they were coming up with the rules, they would have a certain amount of “buy in” and would be more inclined to follow the rules.  But obviously, you couldn’t let kids make up rules, so the teacher would manipulate them into coming up with your rules, but let them think that they were making them up.  It was all very contrived and manipulative.  Then you were supposed to have all the students sign it.  So throughout the school year, when kids were breaking the rules, you would point to the social contract and say, “Hey, you came up with these rules and you signed it, so fall in line!”

The other thing teachers were supposed to do was to greet each student as they came into the classroom each day with a handshake and a positive affirmation.  Mr. Mercer coined this greeting, “Capturing kids viruses”.  And positive affirmations always seemed to me to be an insincere way to engage and manipulate people.  It is just a trick to get people to think that you like them.  If you have to come up with an inauthentic compliment, why that just seems dishonest.  Reminds me of the way salesmen are trained to use the customer’s names as much as they can in any conversation as a way to fake an intimacy that is not real or heartfelt.

Here is a poem I made up during the training to help me endure it:

Ode to the Flippen Group:
The boss said go, and we all went…
but it seems more like punishment.
The grass will grow, the flowers bloom,
but we will sit in this white room.
Tedious and quite inane:  Two more days?  I’ll go insane!
While we complain and bitch and cuss:
The Flippen Group will torture us!