Posts Tagged ‘Comedy School’
Traffic School
You’ve been busted. You just got a traffic ticket. Now you have to attend traffic school if you don’t want that citation to send your insurance rates into the outer strata.
Do you really want to give up your Saturday to spend all day in a musty hotel conference room attending traffic school with other hapless traffic offenders?
Most people would rather experience a root canal sans anesthesia.
I feel your pain. Although it has been quite a few years, I too have some pretty unpleasant memories of my traffic school experiences. I remember resentment building up in me for days on end before I had to go, whining all the way there the day of the class, and sitting in a cramped kiddy desk or a smelly hotel meeting room feeling bitter and bored as some retired police officer droned on for hours about things that I felt I already knew. While traffic school is supposed to be a refresher course on driving and traffic law – those experiences sure as heck felt punitive to me.
When I retired from teaching high school and college to spend more time with my young sons, I decided I needed something to put some cash in my pocket and I answered an ad to teach traffic school on the weekends.
After I was hired, I was handed a 5-inch-thick manual with the DMV-approved curriculum in it. I was told to “find a way” to fill 400 minutes and to “crack some jokes” if I knew any – since this was a “comedy” school. At that moment, it became eminently clear to me why most traffic school experiences were so poor.
Teaching any subject for eight hours straight requires someone who really knows how to keep the interest of students by involving them in the learning process, varying the tempo and the impact of what is being taught, and understanding the importance of entertaining students to keep their attention.
While there are some traffic school teachers who are naturally gifted instructors and who work to create a class that embodies these qualities, most are simply people who have been handed a big book and told to find a way to teach what is between the covers for 400 minutes.
That explains why the online option has become a more desirable way to dull the pain of the traffic school experience.
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By: M. Pearl
About the Author:
M. Pearl has been a traffic school owner and instructor since 1994. Her company, InterActive! Traffic School Online currently offers programs to traffic violators in 6 states, including a Florida Traffic School Online.
Her column on automobile driving is published weekly in newspapers of the various publications of the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.
In addition to being the featured columnist for the online publication NewCarBuyingGuide.com, Ms. Pearl’s work has also been featured in Mazda’s Zoom-Zoom magazine and the International version of Auto Club Magazine.
