I hate the term. Every time I hear it it takes me back to the first time I heard it used. Connotation, I guess that would be called. Like a specific smell that becomes associated with an emotion or an event, the term "roll out" or more specifically "rolling out," sticks in my craw.
Products are rolled out, Presidential appointees and programs are rolled out, and the latest edition of something...anything... is now "rolled out."
Literally, the image conjures something on wheels. A curtain opens and Voila! Here it is, our new improved version of something that needed to be rebooted. On wheels.
Oh that meeting...here's the story.
I was once summoned to an English Department meeting where a newly appointed district administrator was going to be introduced and then inform a group of veteran teachers that the curriculum they wrote, created, and lovingly taught and improved for decades was to be scrapped in favor of some new anthology where all the lessons were predetermined and pre written. Sort of a microwavable way of teaching. Just take the amount you want, add water and nuke it for 20 seconds. Never mind that that administrator and every other underling in the room had no knowledge of what these veteran teachers were teaching, or how, or how effective. Never mind the teaching of whole books, they were saying, the snippets of classics and classic writers were all here in their fragmented glory and all you have to do is use this newly minted rolled out anthology now and we'll all do the same thing at the same time...district wide. Great, huh?
Oh Hell No!
That was the conclusion my colleagues and I reached.
We got advance word that this was coming so we entered the meeting with a bit of a chip resting on our tired shoulders. Then the new Mr. Big was introduced and used the expression. Reminding or perhaps warning us that he had a PhD from Berkeley and probably knew best what and how we should be teaching, the woman introduced Dr. Big and he began by saying today "we are rolling out the new curriculum that you'll be using from now on." I don't believe any of us in that room who would be going back to classrooms full of students believed for one moment that they would use the new mandated text and accompanying lessons.
In what would certainly be one of the best rejoinders I've ever heard one of my colleagues, countered, with, "well, I have a PhD from Cal too and I think we should be teaching whole books."
The meeting ended shortly after that. Hard to tell what people thought, but this I do know. That administrator and the one who introduced him are nowhere near the district these days. No, we never used what was rolled out and rolled over us that day. What followed were a series of student and teacher demonstrations that used a public reading of Fahrenheit 451 to make the point. I guess we rolled out our reaction...to great effect.
Products are rolled out, Presidential appointees and programs are rolled out, and the latest edition of something...anything... is now "rolled out."
Literally, the image conjures something on wheels. A curtain opens and Voila! Here it is, our new improved version of something that needed to be rebooted. On wheels.
Oh that meeting...here's the story.
I was once summoned to an English Department meeting where a newly appointed district administrator was going to be introduced and then inform a group of veteran teachers that the curriculum they wrote, created, and lovingly taught and improved for decades was to be scrapped in favor of some new anthology where all the lessons were predetermined and pre written. Sort of a microwavable way of teaching. Just take the amount you want, add water and nuke it for 20 seconds. Never mind that that administrator and every other underling in the room had no knowledge of what these veteran teachers were teaching, or how, or how effective. Never mind the teaching of whole books, they were saying, the snippets of classics and classic writers were all here in their fragmented glory and all you have to do is use this newly minted rolled out anthology now and we'll all do the same thing at the same time...district wide. Great, huh?
Oh Hell No!
That was the conclusion my colleagues and I reached.
We got advance word that this was coming so we entered the meeting with a bit of a chip resting on our tired shoulders. Then the new Mr. Big was introduced and used the expression. Reminding or perhaps warning us that he had a PhD from Berkeley and probably knew best what and how we should be teaching, the woman introduced Dr. Big and he began by saying today "we are rolling out the new curriculum that you'll be using from now on." I don't believe any of us in that room who would be going back to classrooms full of students believed for one moment that they would use the new mandated text and accompanying lessons.
In what would certainly be one of the best rejoinders I've ever heard one of my colleagues, countered, with, "well, I have a PhD from Cal too and I think we should be teaching whole books."
The meeting ended shortly after that. Hard to tell what people thought, but this I do know. That administrator and the one who introduced him are nowhere near the district these days. No, we never used what was rolled out and rolled over us that day. What followed were a series of student and teacher demonstrations that used a public reading of Fahrenheit 451 to make the point. I guess we rolled out our reaction...to great effect.
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