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Please tell me the meaning of "throw a pallet at her" in this context:

Teachers might be using the Unit Organizer and the course map and starting to see kids that normally don’t respond, responding. Even with that, they’ll use it for a while and then stop using it because they need a lot of support or because they’re very busy at home, and eventually they revert to the old way of take out your book and let me do round-robin reading. Then they become angry because I suspect they know that’s not what they really want to be doing. And here comes Jean Clark and I’m going to throw a pallet at her.

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  • A link to the source would have been helpful sk.sagepub.com/books/the-challenge-of-change-2e Jean Clark is instructional coach, Bohemia Manor Middle School It is about teachers getting angry at instructional coaches telling them how to teach
    – James K
    Commented Apr 9, 2021 at 9:09

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I think, from the context, that this does means literally, as opposed to being an idiom:

Throw (propel (something) with force through the air by a movement of the arm and hand) a pallet (a flat wooden structure that heavy goods are put onto so that they can be moved using a fork-lift truck) at Jean Clark.

CED

Do you have the source? The final line seems out of place.

Edit from relevent speculation by maciej in comments:

My hunch is that it could be a metaphor for "a large amount of things" - in this context, a large amount of grievances that the teachers have towards Jean Clark and want to "throw" (or "hurl") at her. But it would be a rather nonstandard usage.

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  • books.google.com/…
    – laugh salutes Monica C
    Commented Jun 10, 2019 at 12:49
  • Potentially pallet is a metaphor here, but I still couldn't say for certain.
    – Gamora
    Commented Jun 10, 2019 at 12:52
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    Without the context, we cannot rule out the possibility that the author misspelled "palette", as in painting. Most elementary school teachers work with "palettes" for mixing paint occasionally; few elementary school teachers work in warehouses with "pallets".
    – Jasper
    Commented Jul 13, 2019 at 4:06
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    My hunch is that it could be a metaphor for "a large amount of things" - in this context, a large amount of grievances that the teachers have towards Jean Clark and want to "throw" (or "hurl") at her. But it would be a rather nonstandard usage.
    – Maciej Stachowski
    Commented Apr 9, 2021 at 9:12
  • @maciej I like that idea - will add the the answer
    – Gamora
    Commented Apr 19, 2021 at 10:50
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There is a shift of view point in this paragraph. Mostly it is written from the point of view of the author, Jean Clark. She is talking about teachers who find it hard to adopt her ideas, fail to implement them properly, and so don't get good results from their students. This leads to the teachers resenting Jean Clark. But in the last sentence, it shift to the point of view of the teachers. "And here comes Jean Clarke..." is the thought in the angry teacher's mind. Because they are angry, they lash out.

"Throw a pallet" is hyperbolic (not literal). That is they don't actually throw large heavy objects (like pallets) nor even light object (like palettes). But they will forcefully express their anger.

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