Is there a profession that gets inundated with more buzzwords and empty phrases than education? If you listen closely to any faculty meeting, PD or training session (not recommended by the way) you will hear these 30 things mentioned over and over again and we teachers are over it! Let’s all agree that it’s time to send the following phrases packing.

1. Unpacking

Why are we making things more complicated? We’re not going on safari with these kids, we don’t need a backpack metaphor. Just tell us to simplify things. We promise we know how to do it.

2. Rigor

Oh yeah, this word has to go. It’s just fancy talk for ‘make your lesson challenging’. Like we’re not already doing this? Who’s not doing this?

3. Fidelity

Here’s an f-word we should also censor people from using. Forcing teachers to all teach the same things the same way robs us of creativity and let’s face it… most of these cookie-cutter lessons suck.

4. Robust

Why do officials feel the need to remind us that our lessons should be ‘robust’? It’s just another fancy way of saying ‘complex’. Only education could make the word ‘complex’ more complex than it needs to be.

5. What is your why

Nothing will drive a teacher crazy quite like an administrator saying this at the start of a school year to inspire the troops. You wanna hear my why? Why can I not pay my bills with this paycheck? Why am I working unpaid hours? Why am I learning about blood borne pathogens for the 10th year in a row?

6. Data-driven

Yeah sure data is important, but not every decision that we make needs to be analyzed to death. Any good teacher can look at their classroom and know where they all stand without having to break out 17 spreadsheets and a calculus equation.

7. Grit

What does this even mean? To me adding grit to my lesson plans means writing it on sandpaper. These kids struggle with charging their Chromebooks, they are already pretty gritty.

8. Professional Development

See, giving me ‘professional’ development training implies that I am, in fact, a professional. However my paycheck would beg to differ. So maybe until I start getting paid like a professional we should call this “Needless Training for Undervalued Workers”

9. Differentiate

So let me get this straight, you’ve given me 30 students who all learn differently so I have to come up with 30 different ways to get my point across? Funny that education specialists or consultants don’t need to differentiate when they talk to us though.

10. Deep dive

Listen to me, I am a tired human being. There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to go on spelunking quests on every little thing. Not everything can be a deep dive, guys. Sometimes we gotta go an inch-deep and a mile wide.

11. Stakeholders

Unless they are showing up every day and participating in day-to-day activities in my classroom, they are not stakeholders…period. This makes it sound like we’re all investors in a start-up company. We’re not. We’re teachers at a school. Everyone else should be a passive observer.

12. Pivot

Hey teachers, did your technology crap out? Pivot! Did your lesson plan fall apart? Pivot! Did your administrator randomly decide to visit your classroom while you were planning on showing a movie? Pivot! Teachers are some of the most mentally flexible people on Earth, trust me we already know how to do this.

13. Education specialists

Ironically the more “special” these specialists are, the longer it’s been since they’ve actually been in a classroom. There’s nothing like inexperienced people telling very experienced people how to do the thing they’re already doing.

14. Cohort

You can call this whatever you want, it’s just another way to say you’re lumping a group of kids together all day. Do you know what happens when you do that though? They all become very good friends… and they start talking… and it becomes more like a gang than a ‘cohort’.

15. It’s ‘for the children’

Ah, it’s the lie every administrator tells you right before they ask you to do something unpaid or outside of your contract. It’s funny how everything we do is “for the children” until I say I don’t want to do it. Then it suddenly becomes “a job where we do what we’re told”. 

16. Another tool in your toolbelt

My toolbelt is full. It’s overflowing. It’s got more gadgets and gizmos than Batman’s utility belt for crying out loud. Stop giving me tools.

17. Grade with grace

Every teacher has heard this phrase, especially when a school district’s graduation rates aren’t spectacular. We get asked to have “robust” lessons full of “rigor” and “grit”, but if kids are failing then just “grade with grace” (which is code for “just give them a passing grade so we can look good.”)

18. Teaching the whole child

How does one manage to teach only part of a child? Like force them all to use only the left side of their bodies? Pretty sure we’re always dealing with whole children in the classroom.

19. Research-based

Oh goodie! Your strategy to revamp our entire educational philosophy is based on research that someone did? Well thank goodness, because it looks like you guys made this up last night while tipping back one too many mimosas.

20. Learning target

Why do we get asked for these? You know what my students’ learning target is? To learn the lesson I’m teaching. Boom. Pretty clear cut target if you ask me.

21. Friends

Nope, students are not friends. Some of them may be friendly and pleasant and wonderful… but they are students. Changing the phrasing does change the fact that I am, allegedly, the one in charge in my classroom.

22. Best practices

Wait, do you mean to tell me I should be using my BEST practices? The ones that work the BEST? Not the mediocre practices or the crappy practices? Wow, how revolutionary!

23. No child left behind

Pretty sure once we adopted this practice we left a crap-ton of kids behind. So many kids aren’t just being left behind nowadays, they’re being left in the dust. Meanwhile we keep plowing ahead because this curriculum isn’t going to follow itself.

24. PBIS

Is PBIS a bad idea? Not at all. But does it get abused? All the damn time! Once kids know the bare minimum they need to achieve to get their little treat, they stop doing anything more.

25. Gentle parenting

If you want to gentle parent your kids, that’s fine… just know I won’t be gentle teaching them once they get here so you might want to prepare them for that.

26. PLC

Only education could take a boring hour-long meeting every week and call it a “learning community”. What we are is a ‘community of exhausted, overworked, very busy people who need to go work in their classroom instead of being in this meeting’. But I guess COEOVBPWNTGWITCIOBITM is too hard to remember as an acronym.

27. Teachers aren’t in it for the income, they’re in it for the outcome

Lies, lies and more lies! You know who never says this? Teachers. We are absolutely in this for the income because we can’t pay our bills with test scores and graduation rates.

28. Meet them where they’re at

Yes, even if you’ve given me a class of 30 students that are all at different levels, I should meet them all where they’re at? At the same time? What kind of multiple personality human is even capable of that?

29. Scaffolding

Again, stop bringing metaphors into my classroom (unless my students are learning about metaphors). We get it, you have to teach certain things before you can teach other things. This is not revolutionary, this is common sense.

30. Practice self-care

It’s always the people that are the reason I need so much self-care, that tell me to practice self-care. Maybe if you took seven or eight things off my plate I’d have time enough to try some of that self-care everyone keeps talking about!