September 21, 2021

From Gerald R. Lucas

FERPA Training covid-19: day 557 | US: GA | info | act

Yay, me.

Once again, the state of Georgia mandated annual FERPA training, and once again most it had very little to do with my job as an educator. Here’s the rule I have followed since I started as a teaching assistant: don’t share student information.[1] Simple. It has always worked for me. Yes, the information in the training is useful to the university’s middle management, I guess, but really has little to do with me beyond my guideline above.

I’m sure this has something to do with the small government that the Republicans who run this state have envisioned 😏. We’ve only had to do this ridiculous training since the current “governor” has assumed office, and it likely has only to do with supporting some bureaucrat’s 🐂💩💩💩💩💩 job.

Maybe this is unfair, and I’m never against knowing more. However, the compulsory nature of this training, the limited relevancy of the information, the short timeframe we had to complete it, and the fact the training with all of its animated and floating stock images looks like it was created by a Flash user on his fifth espresso, just leaves a bad taste. (It’s almost as silly as the toxic chemicals training we had to take a few years ago.) Especially when I have real work to do that should take precedent.

I guess I should get to it?



note

  1. I inadvertently did one time as a grad student, and it got back to my student. She called me out on it, much to my continued embarrassment and horror, but that’s all that came of it. I was lucky and have been hyper-cognizant of this mistake since.