Stinking CPD

CPD at school can be brilliant. One area of professional development tends to provide more than its fair share of very poor CPD, and more often than not, it can be a cringingly, hilarious awful, pointless waste of time. Whilst I think well-being of staff and children should be at the very heart of what we do (particularly now), training for improving well being can do anything but improve your mood.

An absolute cracker was a staff meeting on essential oils. It was a twilight session, so longer than the normal staff meetings, towards the end of a spring term.

Teachers and TAs gathered in the hall and one of the senior leaders introduced the trainer for the evening. She began by working through a PowerPoint showing how she had been working with another local school to improve the mood and motivation of their children. A good start! She passed round swatches of paper with lemon essential oil on them and invited us to take a sniff. To be fair, it smelled lovely and much better than the old Victorian dusty hall we were all sitting in. Even if we did all feel a bit self conscious and silly sniffing paper and passing it round.

Then she started telling us about other oils and what they could do for us. Oils that would make us calmer, or happier. As we passed round yet more paper to sniff we agreed that they did have a different effect on us and of course all the old jokes about the various smells classrooms contain when populated by primary aged children started. The reception teacher, with a highly trained sense of smell, thought lemon might be a good antidote to the 'brown balls' she was finding this week in various places (Lego box, under the water tray) but had yet to discover who had left them there. A year 6 teacher thought Lavender would perhaps be strong enough to cut through the dense odour in her classroom after a vigorous PE session.

Then came the oil diffusers. Plug in machines to circulate the smell of the oil around the room. She put one on and by now we were beginning to feel a little queasy as sage, lavender, cinnamon and eucalyptus started to mix and fill the hall.

She then passed a whole range of oils round in their neat form. As all teachers know, you never give out a resource without explaining it first. I'd already put some peppermint oil on my fingers to rub on my temples to help the headache that the trainer had just said it would cure, when she added that this particular oil shouldn't be put near the eyes. As the tears began to run down my face, I could see why!

Next came extra special oils, and what they could do beyond making things smell nice, cheering you up a bit or just making the environment a bit more pleasant for everyone. I forget exactly which one would stop the child with ADHD from having a meltdown, or the one that would help children with dyslexia concentrate on reading because I had begun to switch off (and I was still trying to dry my tears).

However, we all heard her say which diseases oils could cure. Cancer was top of her list followed by a long list of other chronic illnesses. At this point we'd been in the hall for almost two hours and patience was wearing very thin. Most of us had mentally started to count the books that needed marking, or think about how we might adapt tomorrow Maths starter.

The final, cringing conclusion to the evening was the trainer giving out order forms for us to buy the diffusers (£35 each) and oils. With our own money. There then followed a rather hostile and lengthy silence when she asked who would be buying which oil and how many the school would be ordering. None. She actually asked again, saying the other school had bought a diffuser and oils for every classroom and then when it was clear we weren't going to buy any, turned her back to us and started to pack away noisily.

Some of us laughed it off as the funniest evening we'd had in a long time, others were resentful of two hours wasted. It certainly went down as a memorable session!

So, two hours of smelling stuff, being told it could cure cancer and then a heavy sales pitch wasn't the best professional development I had ever had. I bet there are plenty of other stinking CPD tales to share! What's yours?