Okay, so now people are biting. Good to see. I'll add one or two of mine. Tomorrow I'll pick one, so spend your New Years Eve sharing your best secrets.

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What is something that everyone in your industry/line of work knows but doesn't talk about? What is it that everyone on the inside knows that hardly anyone outside knows... and they're probably better off not knowing?

Like "all wines are pretty much the same, we just slap different labels on them and sell them for different prices so people think they're getting something special".

Huh. No takers, eh? Don't want to reveal trade secrets?

Still nothing.

Show of hands... want me to think up a different topic?

uuhhhh... ok?

I could contribute from my former employer but there is a risk of litigation, I think I will bow out..You could just go to Glassdoor or TheLayoff.com to get such stories..

But I will not go there here. Sorry.

Perhaps this is no secret, but when you call in to your "friendly" IT department for assistance, know that we are not a judgment-free zone. Moreover, if you call in with a problem you're encountering with a specific task, we will absolutely try to ascertain what your end goal is. Ninety-two times out of a hundred, you're trying to do the wrong thing to get the results you're expecting. Are the IT people smug about this? Yes, we are.

I don’t know how many of these aren’t commonly known, because so many of my friends are teachers I’ve kind of lost all perspective of what it is like to not be in education.

Teachers will find ways to trick kids into taking things (food, warm coats, hats) if their parents have told them not to accept charity and we know that these things are needed. Every teacher I know who teaches in a school with high needs has secret stashes of stuff that they hand to kids with the promise that their parents don’t have to know.

The average North American classroom looks nothing like it did when any of us went to school. In many schools, teachers are regularly hit, bitten, sworn at, etc, by students of all ages. These students often return to the classroom the same day. Every teacher I know struggles with this because we all know all kids have a right to an education, but we also want our classrooms to feel safe. There just aren’t enough supports for both of these things to happen in many schools.

Every teacher has favourite kids. They probably aren’t the ones you would expect.

We absolutely want parents to be involved. Volunteer. Donate stuff. Let us know about things going on at home. Advocate for your kid. But if you tell us we should do *insert classroom idea from Facebook/Pinterest here* don’t be surprised when we smile and nod and never do it. There are 758 factors impacting programming decisions. And sometimes those “really good ideas” are really awful ideas when you look at them from a different perspective.

Kids under 10 tell us everything. We know an awful lot of secrets that parents would rather we not know. Yes, this has happened to your family and we never told you.

quote:

Kids under 10 tell us everything.

Hope most of those are funny.

quote:

Originally posted by CHAS:

quote:

Kids under 10 tell us everything.

Hope most of those are funny.

Thankfully, they usually are.

Mine are super nerdly and super boring. Like many if not most research protocols do not have a sample size large enough to warrant the grandiose claims they are making. In statistical terms, there is not enough power in their sample. Several journals are now requiring people to calculate power and include it in their results, but not all.

Also - Likert scales (those 1 to 10 type scales of agree/disagree or similar) produce only ordinal numbers, and should only be analyzed using nonparametric statistics. But virtually everyone ignores this.

See? Boring and nerdly. The really juicy stuff in my job I will keep to myself.

Nerdly joke for Nina’s eyes only... the rest of you, just skip to the next post right now!

I prefer Likert objects with an odd number of choices.
[] Strongly disagree
[] Disagree
[] Agree
[] Strongly agree

Most Steinway pianos we see really aren't anything special....

Even though smoking is banned on all commercial flights within, into, or out of the US, ashtrays are still required equipment on all aeroplanes.

If you've ever wondered what else is required, the FAA maintains a document called the Master Minimum Equipment List for each aeroplane type. You can read them all here: http://fsims.faa.gov/PICResult...ication&doctype=MMEL

So, it's not really much of a secret.

Oh, and you remember that flight on KreplachAir where I only managed to get out of town by riding in the flight deck? Of course, smoking was absolutely prohibited anywhere in the cabin, the lavs, etc... but... apparently not in the flight deck. The captain chainsmoked SEVEN cigarettes from the top of descent to landing.