Why Do PD Presenters Keep Talking When Lunch Just Got Delivered? A Teacher’s Perspective
Last month, I sat in a middle school library for a full district professional development day on new literacy standards. By 11:40, my stomach was growling so loud the 7th grade math teacher next to me pulled out a granola bar and slid it across the table to me. We’d all been watching the caterers wheel covered foil pans through the back door for five minutes, the smell of buttered garlic bread and marinara wrapping around the room until it was all any of us could think about. The presenter, a consultant from out of town, clicked to the next slide. “Just one more quick case study on small group reading,” he said, and not a single person said a word. We all just sat there, pens clicking, staring at the back of his head while the lunch volunteers hovered by the door holding stacks of paper plates.
I’ve been teaching long enough that I know this isn’t some rare jerk move. I’ve been the PD presenter too, 18 months back, leading a session on differentiated grading for new teachers at a regional conference. I was 10 minutes behind schedule, the organizer had emailed me three times that morning reminding me we had to wrap up sharp at 12:15 because the next room needed to set up. I saw the conference staff roll the lunch trays in through the side door at 12:02. I panicked. I still had two slides of takeaways I was supposed to cover, the district that hired me had specifically asked for those points. So I just kept talking. I didn’t mean to be rude. I was so focused on checking all the boxes I’d promised to check that I forgot to look up and read the room.
Over lunch that day last month, I ended up sitting next to that literacy consultant, and we laughed about it when I brought it up. He told me the caterer had delivered 15 minutes early, and he’d been so wrapped up in answering a question from the crowd that he didn’t even notice the food was out until he finished that last case study. “I thought I was on track,” he said, wiping garlic bread crumbs off his notebook. “By the time I realized everyone was ready to eat, I figured I might as well just finish what I started.”
That’s the thing no one talks about when we’re grumbling about rude PD presenters: nine times out of ten, it’s not that they don’t care that we’re hungry. It’s that they’ve been taught, just like the rest of us, that finishing the planned content matters more than meeting the immediate, obvious needs of the people in front of them. And that’s a lesson I see play out in my classroom and my home all the time, too. Last week, I was reminding my 10-year-old son about putting his cleats in his backpack for soccer practice after he finished his after-school snack. He’d just pulled his chocolate chip muffin out of the microwave, steam still curling off the top, and I kept talking. I kept reminding him about the cleats, about the homework he had to finish after practice, about remembering to text his dad when practice ended, and he just stood there holding the hot muffin, shifting his weight from foot to foot, not wanting to interrupt me. I didn’t stop until the muffin dripped melted chocolate on my kitchen rug. And that’s when I realized: I was doing the exact same thing I’d complained about that PD presenter doing two weeks earlier.
I got so focused on getting all my reminders out, on checking that box of “I told him what he needs to know,” that I ignored the most obvious cue in front of me: he was hungry, his food was hot, and all he wanted to do was eat it.
The good news is this is an easy fix, for presenters and for parents and teachers, and it doesn’t require a big schedule overhaul or anything fancy. I started adding a three minute buffer to the end of every lesson I teach, every PD I lead, even every conversation I have with my kid about upcoming plans, just to account for things like early lunch or a melting ice cream cone. If I’m talking and I notice food’s sitting there getting cold, I just pause. I say “Looks like food beat us to it, let’s break and pick this back up later” and that’s it. For parents at home, that just looks like pausing mid-sentence to say “Your toast is going to get cold, let’s finish this after you eat” and that takes 10 seconds. If you’re the one sitting in the PD starving, or the kid waiting to eat your snack, you don’t have to be rude to speak up. I’ve started just raising my hand a little and saying “Looks like lunch is here, would you want to break early?” and no one’s ever gotten mad about it. Most presenters are relieved someone said something, because they’re just as nervous about cutting content as you are hungry to eat.
It turns out people don’t retain much of anything when their blood sugar is dropping and all they can think about is the garlic bread sitting ten feet away. I’ve left hours-long PD sessions where the presenter talked through lunch delivery and couldn’t tell you a single takeaway, but I can still remember how cold the pasta was by the time I got to it. The same goes for kids: they’re not going to remember your reminder about cleats or permission slips if they’re sitting there staring at a soggy sandwich, waiting for you to stop talking. It doesn’t matter how important your point is; it won’t land if the person listening is too hungry to focus.
We talk a lot about meeting people where they are, in education and parenting, but it’s easy to forget that the first need people have is often the simplest one: to eat when they’re hungry. I still catch myself sometimes, wrapped up in what I need to say next, not looking up to see the foil pans through the door, or the melting ice cream dripping down my kid’s wrist. It’s a small habit to break, but it makes every conversation, every lesson, every PD day, a little better for everyone. I’m still working on it, but so far, pausing for lunch has never ruined anything I’ve had to say.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » Why Do PD Presenters Keep Talking When Lunch Just Got Delivered