With a week to go before students arrived, we had in school training.  This was mostly uneventful, except we got more acronyms to learn and "incorporate into our curriculum."  PDAS, ACTfL, AFT, something something.  Oh and be ready for TAKS!!!!

However, this was the first time I had to sit through a presentation by the testing coordinator.  This particular woman is roughly 100 pounds overweight and around 50 years old.  Despite this age, she chooses to talk like a baby.  As if that was not bad enough, the time had come for me to become a spectator of Redundancy At Its Absolute Worst.  Here is a VERY small segment of her typical speech (keep in mind, she presents an hour-long segment EACH time we administer a test, be it state-mandated, mid-terms, finals, ACPs, etc.), keep it mind it is in 50 year old fat woman baby voice, and pronounced veeeeery sloooooowly:

"When you give the student the answer sheet, tell them NOT to bubble in the names.  The names are bubbled in for them.  Already.  So they shouldn't do it.  They always try to bubble right when they get it.  So tell them not to!  If that's bubbled in, we get in trouble.  I mean if the student bubbles it in.  It's bad.  So YOU tell them not to.  Then make sure they don't.  Okaaaay? It's ok if they don't bubble it in.  In fact, they need to be told not to do it.  By you.  One time I saw a student bubbling in their name, and I said, 'WAIT!  No no no.'  Because they don't need to."

Without fail, we are also given a sheet of paper with the instructions on it.  So the meeting is called so we can sit and listen to her elaborate and say the same thing 238291038210 different ways.  Did I mention the meeting is Mandatory For All Teachers?