The entire conference room- there must be over 500 teachers in here- has been conscripted into a 9 a.m. line dance.  Everyone’s supposed to stand up and copy this ridiculously enthusiastic morning writhing in unison with all the other strangers.  I hate it.  It’s my worst nightmare, minus the ebola.  I’m hiding in the back behind a piling thinking I would only do something like this if it were a wedding, open bar, and we were making up our own moves and giggling.

In other words, we if we had some autonomy.  

The irony is that one of the big messages in these conference sessions is that to create cohesion in a classroom- thereby creating an engaged, compassionate, and high-achieving community- you must give students choice and control.  Autonomy.  It’s weird to me that they’re starting today with brainless, compliance-based call and response.