
There is a whole industry that preys upon school districts, both public and private, by offering speakers to come give “important” talks to local school children and/or faculty and staff for a nice fee.
Once such group got money from the private Catholic middle school where I taught for a few years. Our administration hired someone to come talk to the faculty of the dangers of texting and walking. I am not kidding. They actually paid money for this.
During a campuswide faculty/staff meeting, an hour was set aside for this guest speaker. Back when smart phones first entered the scene, occasional videos would go viral of people so engrossed in their phones that they walked into fountains or dropped into holes in the ground. They were funny. We all laughed at them. But did we seriously need “an expert” to explain to us that this practice of staring at your phone while walking is dangerous??
And to make matters worse, the person who actually did the presentation, complete with powerpoint slides (to me, an immediate sign of an amateur) and said viral videos, was a terrible public speaker. What a waste.
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