First Staff Meeting

A good thing about the music education Wal-Mart is we only have staff meetings once a month and the meetings have a defined purposed.  This month was the beginning of the year assessment procedure, as explained by the official curriculum writer.  Boy, what a fun meeting to attend!

One new employee is a middle-aged lady who obviously has a brain in her head.  Immediately, she laid into the crappy assessment design.  The assessments are vague and poorly worded.  One assessment question covers multiple skills and knowledge.  Last, but certainly not least, the assessments are only somewhat related to the activities they are meant to test.  Oh, and they are also full of mistakes and missing questions.  They are a classic example of a fubar project.

The official curriculum writer also wrote the assessments.  She does not have enough intellect to realize how truly terrible they are.  For example one item asks for how many students can "perform half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes, dotted notes, quarter rests and syncopated rhythms."  Now laying aside the question of what is meant by "perform," eight different different rhythms are listed.  In one of my classes, everyone can perform quarter notes, eighth notes and quarter rests.  A third of the students can do half notes.  A couple of kids know sixteenth notes (they take private lessons).  Nobody knows a thing about dotted notes or syncopation.  How the hell am I supposed to reduce all that to one number?  0% of the students can do everything, 100% can do part of it.

This new employee pointed this idiocy out in great detail, and the curriculum writer had absolutely no answer for her.  The curriculum writer kept uttering inane platitudes about how the assessments are "a work in progress," and they are "new to me too."  Then came the sentence that nearly caused me to fall out of my chair, "I hear your frustrations and share them."

WHAT?!  You share our frustrations?  Well ain't that just lovely, sweetie.  Here's the thing.  You wrote the damn things, if you actually were frustrated and had a brain between your ears, you would rewrite the silly things so they'd make sense.  But sense ain't exactly your strong suit, is it? Don't tell me you share our frustrations because your actions tell me you obviously do not.