I go to a lot of dance performances, and sometimes the dancers are performing new "experimental" choreography. Sometimes the new choreography is wonderful, and everyone goes home happy. But there was one particular performance of a new dance that was so excruciatingly bad that when the dancers came out towards the end for a curtain call they looked mortified. Like "please don't remember me for this."
This particular mortified look can be found on people with some self-awareness when they're forced to make a presentation that they know is just complete nonsense. I remembered the dancers when my AP held a department meeting this week and explained the new Regents grading protocol. To help along with the process he prepared a powerpoint lecture. I was assigned to take the meeting minutes, so I think I paid more attention to him than most people in the department. His speech and the lecture went something like this:
"Ok in January some teachers will be going elsewhere whereas some teachers will be staying here where they'll be joined by a lot of other teachers from other schools and we'll be grading the exams of students from schools that don't include us and the schools of all the teachers who will be joining us for grading meanwhile proctors be very careful because all our tests have to be labeled packaged and shipped to another site and be sure you take attendance carefully because once the exams are finished they have to be boxed immediately and shipped so we can't account for any missing exams but if all goes smoothly then our students' tests will be graded and uploaded to AIS and the exams we grade will be uploaded to AIS so it will all work out and here's a flowchart I made of all the instructions proctors have to follow but I can go back a slide or two if you guys missed any of the steps and by the way I attended an all-day seminar on this and these are the new rules and ..."
At this point a teacher interrupted him and said, "With all due respect I teach AP Physics but I haven't the foggiest idea what we're supposed to do."
The AP drew a deep breath. "Well, here's the flowchart."
Intransigent veteran AP Physics teacher: "I looked at the flowchart. I still have no idea what the rules are."
Awkward pause. So I piped up with what I thought was a joke: "This is like UPS!"
The AP to my surprise looked relieved. "That's EXACTLY what it's like! We have to handle the exams like UPS would, with packaging, labeling, and shipping to the right destination."
Um, okay then.
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