The Administration of the Howard County Maryland School System, back in a time when it was very small, had planned a full day of activities, and it had started with a morning lecture which was to be the keynote and a way to kick it all off. Unfortunately the keynote speaker, I have no idea who it was to be or what he was going to talk about, but that speaker could not make it that morning, so long ago somewhere in the mid- 1960’s.
I have no idea what I would have done, given the last minute discovery of this information, but they did what they could. I guess they couldn’t just let us go, and in an effort top make it look like they had made an effort, they came up with another speaker. This was a man described as a scientist, who would speak to us, in an illustrated lecture, on the “Geology of the Moon”.
We were told in no uncertain terms that we were all professionals, and because of this we should be interested in the education of the whole child, and scientific information would be good for all of us anyway. The heavy emphasis was on “professional”, not just plain teachers.
The speaker had slides of somewhere out west where he assumed the world looked pretty much like the moon. This was, of course, before we ever landed on the moon, and it could have been green cheese and therefore more interesting, but southwest slides of rock formations were ours to see and hear about for the next 1 ½ to 2 hours!.
We were devastated. It was so boring, I guess it would be of some interest to science teachers, that I can still remember the talk and the slides, speaks to it just a bit.
When it ended, thank God, we all breathed a sigh of relief and were presented with the Superintendent who told all of us “professionals” that we were free for an hour for lunch, and warned us of the dire consequences of returning late. Our professional status ended with his remarks.
The rest of the day is lost in history.
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