BTSA bites!!!

After a pretty fun weekend, I was dreading coming back to work this morning. Six more weeks of school seems like an eternity! I spent the day teaching, preparing materials, and writing IEP's. Oh, and a mandatory three hour meeting to top it off. This meeting was designed to allow new teachers to share what we have learned about ourselves...the meeting being only a drop in the bucket of a huge "mentorship" program designed for every first and second year teacher in the state of CA. The 2 year program is called BTSA and it involves 40 hours each year of extra paperwork and meetings. I forget what it officially stands for, but I have many names for it (most not fit to be spoken out loud); I usually refer to it as "Better Teach Somewhere, Anywhere other than California". When I got to the meeting (literally 300 other teachers/staff from the district were there), we had assigned seating with some goodies for us. We got a traveling coffee mug, a notepad, and a pencil. It would have been cool, but it had the BTSA logo on it, and whenever I am forced to think about BTSA, I get this odd feeling in my stomach--like a cross between burning hatred and defeated hopelessness. So I guess what I'm saying is that I wish I was in Lapeer right now so I could throw their "goodies" in the fireplace and watch it all burn.....
Maybe I will have something more uplifting to say tomorrow :)