Professional development. The bane of existence for teachers. It’s Saturday, and the teachers at St. John’s Diocesan are scheduled to be there from 9 until 4, so Ashu and I are going—at least for the first half. We’d like to see some of Kolkata also, so we’re not sacrificing the entire day.

No one—not even A-Ban, the head teacher, or Subha, who is also clearly a teacher leader in the school, knows the topic, and in fact it is unusual—they only have one or two of these days each year and they’ve already had one so the question is what is this mysterious extra PD day all about. Is it something special?

I called Subha to ask how they dress for PD. In the states we dress casually for those days—jeans- level casual. Fine, that’s fine she responds. But I am not sure—she is unwaveringly accommodating. My question is not if I can wear jeans—it’s how do they dress…. I need to phrase my questions more carefully.

The streets are clear today and the taxi ride is half as long as during the week. We still can’t figure out why the fare is 100 rupees (about $2.50) in the morning and 50 rupees on the way home. The staff is arriving as we do—punching in at the front office just as they do during the work week, and wearing saris! And the men are wearing ties. Shoot. Ashu is wearing a plaid button-down shirt and I am wearing jeans. Of course they say it’s fine, but darn it.

The speaker is Amitabh Mohan, a psychologist from Human Learning Systems India. His presentation is called “Quality in Teaching through Motivation.” He seems to be a very practiced presenter. He opens without a word, typing instructions on PowerPoint that everyone should write down 10 statements describing him. Not physical attributes—personality traits. I can’t do it—I write down only those things I can know from nothing more than a few minutes of watching someone. I write things like “silent; mute?” “male,” “workshop leader,” “a puzzle.” They are neither personality traits nor statements, but it’s the best I can do.

I refrain from smart-aleck statements like self-centered & silly. He uses these statements for a little warm-up exercise. He tells the teachers that their statements say more about them than about him (he’s got a point, right?) asks them to read their descriptions of him, and then does a brief analysis of their personalities. It seems like fortune–telling. The analysis he does of most of them would be equally applicable to virtually every person in the room. But the teachers are so polite, so amicable. Subha volunteers her answers and they are all descriptive statements—and all high praise for this “esteemed and accomplished presenter.”

This warm-up lasts an hour and a half. We’re behind schedule already. Ashu and I planned to leave at noon to join the rest of the group for a walking tour of the city, but the school planned on us for lunch today, and we don’t want to be rude, so we stay.

Kolkata time and Cleveland time are two entirely different entities. We continue to learn that lesson over and over.

The 90 minutes after the break are not much different. We do a personality inventory and given scores for passive, aggressive, and assertive, he does what he jokingly (except it’s very accurate) calls a behavioral horror-scope. Again the teachers are polite and amicable. I tell Subha that the American teachers would be having fits that their time was being used so inefficiently. I’m hopeful that the afternoon will be meatier. There is some interesting material in his handout on motivation among various personality types that looks interesting—and clearly applicable to classroom practice.

We have lunch—a delicious hot lunch, and Ashu and I leave.

We want to meet up with the group who we think are taking a walking tour of historical sites of Kolkata. We call, and they tell us they are at government center which I presume is a historic site. After a very long taxi ride during which our drive stops at least four times to ask directions, and Ashu gets increasingly frustrated, we discover that government center is a mall.

They had decided to go shopping. So I shop—for about 20 minutes, before they’re ready to go. But I make my first non-food purchases in India. I agonize over a couple of shirts—and go to get Keturah for a second opinion on one of them, then cannot find the store again. That was foolish. The one shirt was 395 rupees, the other 250. That would be $8.70 and $5.50. Clearly I should have just grabbed the top I liked. But 500 just sounds like so much….

The taxi ride was fascinating, though. Our driver was genuinely trying to find this place, and at one point we had 5 or six middle-aged men next to the car, reading my text with the name of the place and heatedly discussing where this place is.

On Monday Subha reports that the afternoon session was, in fact, more meaningful, and presents Ashu and I with certificates attesting to our attendance at Amitabh Mohan’s workshop.

Dinner tonight is at Laura’s teacher’s flat. It will be, for most of us, our first look at a Kolkatan home. The two teachers are lovely, the food delicious and very filling—most of us cannot even finish what’s on our plates. It’s a great treat—homey, local, delicious and relaxed. Several of us have trouble staying awake—hopefully these are the final vestiges of jet lag.

The view of the city from their flat is great: