Why Do PD Presenters Keep Talking When Lunch Just Arrived? A Teacher And Parent’s Perspective
Last month, I sat through a three-hour district professional development session on reading interventions in the wobbly folding chairs of our local middle school library. I’d skipped breakfast to get my 12-year-old to early basketball practice before school, and by 12:10 I was so hungry my notes were turning into scribbles of grilled cheese. When the catering crew rolled in the big silver insulated carts, the whole room perked up. The smell of warm ham sandwiches and lemon cookies drifted over the rows of tables, and our staff group chat blew up with texts: Finally. Tell her to wrap it up.
The presenter, a consultant from the state education department, just kept flipping through her slides. She didn’t glance at the caterers stacking boxed lunches on the back table, didn’t pause to let anyone slip out, just kept talking about the new literacy benchmark requirements. The fourth grade teacher sitting next to me leaned over and whispered, “My blood sugar is so low I can’t even remember what grade I teach. Is she doing this on purpose?”
I got my lunch 12 minutes later, when she finally wrapped up, and ate a wilted side salad leaning against a bookshelf. As I brushed crumbs off my lesson plan notebook, I started thinking about the time I led a PD for new elementary teachers last fall. I was supposed to wrap up my section on de-escalation at 12:30, but the caterers showed up 15 minutes early, rolling their carts right through the middle of my explanation of how to talk down a frustrated kindergartener. I kept talking too. I didn’t do it because I was rude. I did it because the district specifically asked me to cover that section before lunch, and if I stopped, I knew at least half the room would grab their food and leave for their cars, run errands, and half wouldn’t come back for the afternoon session. I’d get an email from the admin coordinator after asking why I didn’t cover the required content.
That’s the thing no one talks about when we complain about this. Most of the time, it’s not that presenters don’t notice the lunch. They’re just focused on the boxes they have to check. They’re on a strict timeline, required to hit all the learning objectives for the day, because teachers need those credit hours to keep their licenses. They’ve had it happen before: they pause when lunch arrives, and half the audience never comes back. So they keep talking, because that’s what the people who hired them expect them to do.
That same night, I got home and caught myself doing the exact same thing with my son. I’d just pulled a batch of his favorite chocolate chip cookies out of the oven to cool on the counter after dinner, and I started talking to him about the reading log he’d forgotten to turn in for the third week in a row. I was mid-sentence about how this was going to affect his reading grade when I looked up and saw his eyes were glued to the cookies, not me. He was nodding along, but I could tell he had no idea what I was saying. All he could think about was that warm cookie sitting three feet away.
It clicked right then: this isn’t just a PD problem. It’s a universal problem for anyone who has something important to say, to a room of teachers or to their own kid. We’re so focused on getting our point across that we tune out the most basic human need right in front of us. A starving brain can’t pay attention, no matter how important your message is. When I realized that, I stopped mid-rant about the reading log and said, “Go grab a cookie. It’s still warm. We can talk about this after you eat.” He looked so relieved I almost felt bad for not noticing sooner. He ate half the cookie, leaned against the counter, and we actually talked through a plan to remember his log, instead of him just nodding through my lecture.
I’ve started testing small changes since that day, both when I’m presenting PD and when I’m talking to my kid about hard stuff. If I’m leading a session, I mention at the start that if anyone needs to get a drink or grab lunch early when it arrives, they don’t need to raise their hand or ask permission—just slip out quietly. If lunch shows up early when I’m still talking, I pause for five minutes, tell everyone to go grab their food, and say we’ll finish the last 10 minutes while people eat. No one has to sit there starving. For parents, that looks like pausing any important conversation when after-school snacks hit the table, or waiting until after dinner to talk about grades or behavior, instead of cornering a hungry kid the second they walk in the door. If you’re an attendee stuck in a PD and you’re starving, you don’t have to make a big scene—just slip out quietly to get your lunch. Most presenters won’t even call attention to it, and the ones that do probably need to hear the feedback anyway.
I still catch myself doing it sometimes. Last week, I was in back-to-back parent-teacher conferences, and the office brought me my late dinner halfway through my last meeting. I found myself just keeping talking to the mom across the table, even as the plate of pasta got cold by the door. I caught myself a minute in, laughed, and paused to grab it, set it between us, and said “I’m sorry, I’m so hungry I can barely remember your kid’s name. Let’s eat while we talk.” The conversation was more relaxed after that, anyway.
It’s not a perfect fix, and some days you’re on such a tight timeline you just have to keep going. But next time you’re sitting in a PD starving while the presenter keeps talking, chances are they’re not being rude. They’re just like the rest of us: focused on checking the boxes, and forgot to notice the most basic thing right in front of them. And that’s a mistake any of us can make, whether we’re standing in front of a room of teachers or standing in our own kitchen talking to our kid.
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