Keynote Speaker Runs Amok

  Today was our back to school luncheon, and my colleagues and I were treated to a symposium on how not to give a keynote speech. I won't mention the lady's name. I will mention that she is educational big- wig who is prominent in the movement for Common Core Standards.
   It left me wondering why is it that the people who tell us what we teachers have to do are usually the worst teachers of all? The lady placed a presentation on the big screen and then proceeded to read it to us (I have had them even pass out copies of what was on the screen). I graduated from college. I know how to read. If I did this in my classroom, I would have no justifiable argument to use to prevent my kids from taking their pencils ( if any still have a pencil) and plunging it eraser deep into their eardrums.
   Being generous, I might acknowledge that the lady and her cohorts have good intentions and some good reasons for what they believe. But, I find it frightening when the people who are making these big important decisions that will impact education in America for years to come, too often don't have the common sense to recognize that it is probably not a great idea to put all the new Language Arts and Math standards on a big screen and go over them line by line to a group of people who had just eaten lunch on a hot day in August.
  Is it too much to ask that at least one of people making these big decisions would know that it would suffice to say that changes are coming, explain why in way that would make an avid Twitter user jealous (heck, use texting abbreviations), and close by telling us that we are the only thing standing between civilization and the History Channel series "Life Without People" becoming a reality show. Really.