schoolteachers - have a question (long winded)

[ladykemma]

well today was my first day back.

over the summer i attended summer school to improve my spanish, and a bunch of little professional developments, the stuff you have to go to.

i also went to a 8 hour mandatory ESL thing, which was a complete waste of time. poorly prepared, poorly delivered. the afternoon was wasted on reviewing a curriculum that I don't teach. I and another teacher (algebra) asked politely if we could leave. they said no.

so I sat there and was quite angry for 4 hours of the afternoon. I wrote a brutal, honest course evaluation, saying that they had "wasted 8 hours of my precious summer vacation" and gave them some constructive criticism on the lack of preparation and the chemistry teacher does not need to look over the new 5th grade books.

i forgot about it and moved on with my summer.

fast forward to today. I arrived at school, hunted down my supervisor to say hello. first words out of her mouth were, so, how were the esl classes this summer. I raved enthusiastically and went on about the spanish class. She said, No, i mean the esl class. huh? Oh, thaaaat one. Told her my opinion on it.

apparently the organizer went and found my supervisor, and said: Is kemma happy teaching ESL? Some things that I had said concerned her....
I said where is this coming from? yes I am very happy teaching ESL to the point of spending my entire summer in summer school to get better at it.

my boss said that this lady was very well connected and that i had pissed off a high muckety muck. heck, I didn't know who she was.

I replied, well, it sounds like SHE is not happy with ME teaching ESL.

now my boss is looking at me sideways and I am feeling icky vibes from her.

I feel confused and betrayed at the supposed confidential course evaluations. I feel fear that my boss has a wrong impression of me.

opinions and advice please?

i know I have left stuff out so i will come and add as I remember details.

 

[ladykemma]

me again. I think what is bothering me the most is the "flip". she has flipped the situation to where I am the one looking bad.

what a mind F%ck.

 

[pinkflamingo]

LK-

I work with some people like that. I have learned my lesson and I always give high marks on the evaluations at the end. They always read them, they are never confidential IME. Actually, here, the front side has our name, SS# and teaching location, and the back is an evaluation. we are required to fill in EVERY EVALUATION BUBBLE or else we dont get credit. How's that for honest?

Anyway, hugs to you, they will get over it.

Oh, I am totally with you on these crazy B*tches, my &*#$#$ secretary is a passive aggressive snot. She tried to have my car towed because I parked in the wrong spot today!!!! It wasn't labeled or marked... this was day #5 at my new school. She knew I parked there because she confronted me this morning, but I didn't have a chance to move it because I was eyeball deep in stuff to do this morning. I told her that. I find out later, she called the tow company, the AP intervened and ran a check on my vehicle tag, found it was my car, stopped her. AAAAAAAAARG!! I told him I was concerned about her behavior regarding this, he supported her by saying it was an innocent mistake and she was worried about the childrens' safety. I was like, WHATEVER but he wouldn't say a bad word about her.

Grrrr...

 

[ladykemma]

Date: 8/9/2006 5:17:26 PM
Author: pinkflamingo
LK-

I work with some people like that. I have learned my lesson and I always give high marks on the evaluations at the end. They always read them, they are never confidential IME. Actually, here, the front side has our name, SS# and teaching location, and the back is an evaluation. we are required to fill in EVERY EVALUATION BUBBLE or else we dont get credit. How''s that for honest?

Anyway, hugs to you, they will get over it.

Oh, I am totally with you on these crazy B*tches, my &*#$#$ secretary is a passive aggressive snot. She tried to have my car towed because I parked in the wrong spot today!!!! It wasn''t labeled or marked... this was day #5 at my new school. She knew I parked there because she confronted me this morning, but I didn''t have a chance to move it because I was eyeball deep in stuff to do this morning. I told her that. I find out later, she called the tow company, the AP intervened and ran a check on my vehicle tag, found it was my car, stopped her. AAAAAAAAARG!! I told him I was concerned about her behavior regarding this, he supported her by saying it was an innocent mistake and she was worried about the childrens'' safety. I was like, WHATEVER but he wouldn''t say a bad word about her.

Grrrr...

guess i learned a lesson today. so who knew? give high marks for evaluations and SHUT UP.

I also forgot the forgotten rule about get to the boss first, when something has happened to tell your side first. i feel rather sick to my stomach that my beloved boss is looking at me funny. Oh well I have an excellent track record, and almost got teacher of the year last year. My star continues to shine.

what I will do is do and say nothing, next week someone else will be on the hot plate.

secretaries at schools you have to kiss their butts. they run the place and they know it. with secretaries I am just all sugar, peaches, and cream -- all diabetic sweet.

regarding the secretary, hunney, it wasn''t "an innocent mistake"....bull sh%t ! she knew what she was doing and she called the tow truck anyway.

 

[ladykemma]

ya know, the AP intervening was sort of putting her in her place....

 

[pinkflamingo]

See, I am really nice to every secretary. That's why I was shocked. I guess someone peed in her cheerios this morning.
You are totally right about the AP, I think.

Sigh! What a way to start the year for both of us, eh?

 

[upgrading mama]

LadyKemma,
SO sorry for your dilemma. I say, stick to your guns, even if it bothered the higher up. After all, the day of learning was meant for you to gain something, and THEY failed YOU on that point.
If you have a good repore with your boss (which it sounds like you do) I would just have a heart to heart and say you were just telling the truth. And hey, sometimes, the truth hurts.

 

[phoenixgirl]

Sorry Ladykemma! I know how that goes.

The problem with my school system (and I suspect most of them) is that it isn't a meritocracy. Mediocre and wonderful teachers get paid the same, and the mediocre teacher might even be better connected and get better breaks.

It sounds like your supervisor was more annoyed that she had the organizer's wrath rain down on her. As much as you wish your supervisor would have stood up for privacy and free speech, she's in the same system you are and needs to watch her own back. I can understand why she would react that way. If it comes to anything -- if the organizer tries to get you reprimanded or something, then I would fight, but otherwise, lay low.

This is probably going to be controversial, but from my experience, leadership that involves all women can tend to be catty, at least in schools. My department (English) has one single guy, and more than its fair share of catty back-stabbers. The poor lone guy came and begged me at the end of the year to go out for department chair (the last one had been walked all over by the witches and couldn't last more than a year) because I'm the only person who is nice to him, but I would have had to give up journalism and doing the school paper. It pays the same as doing a publication, but you're required to work two extra weeks over the summer and still have to teach the same number of classes. Hmmm . . . give up something I enjoy for more work and stress and the same pay? Tough choice!

I've learned (through being burned a few times) when to fight back and when to lay low. We had this scary narcissist who finally retired last year. She would just decide you had wronged her and start yelling at you. I found that the only way to diffuse her was over-the-top praise. "Oh dear, well I am just so sorry that you took it that way, because you're the one person I look up to more than anyone else. It never occurred to me to approach you about this because, to be honest, I'm intimidated by you. We all think you're awe-inspiring." I'm not kidding; that's what I said verbatim. She actually stopped by on her last day ever to yell at me (she was really mad at my friend who has the room next door and whose mentor I was, but she wasn't there, so she moved on to me). It would have been fun to say something like, "Didn't want to leave on a high note, did we?" Instead, I did my whole routine again, but this time in an obviously disingenuous way, "Oh NO! Oh DEAR! Oh, I feel SO terrible! And I'll MISS you SOOO much! It's been SUCH a pleasure working with you! You've ALWAYS been just SO lovely!" It was a glorious moment when she and her crony abruptly turned on their heels and ran away before I could give them any more false apologies and praise, and the upside was that I didn't say anything that could be used against me. What was she going to do, complain that she thought I didn't really mean my apology?

 

[Ellen]

My husband made up a saying that unfortunately is true to a certain degree.

"Women give women a bad name."

 

[rainbowtrout]

I''m not a schoolteacher, but one of our close family friends has been one for many, many years--and she has always said that the degree of politics involved in our schools as opposed to the degree of education and quality is shameful...sounds like it''s still going on. It''s often not a meritocracy, and it''s often more about the upper-upps and who they are connected to...


If it were me I don''t know what I would do. On the one hand, does it help anything in the long run for everyone to just lie on the evals? On the other hand, why be a squeaky wheel/risk your job.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

Ugh! This is sort of depressing! I, too, hate my time being wasted on things that don''t apply to me! We do at times have anonymous evaluations, but you just have to be careful that your answers don''t identify who you are. On workshop evals, I might give some average marks if I didn''t like it and I only give the highest marks if I really liked it.

I have never in my life heard of a teacher''s car being towed from a school parking lot. I''m not sure I could work in a place like that. But at least the AP blocked it.

 

[eks6426]

LadyKemma-

I feel for you. It''s totally not fair that your honest evaluation is used against you. I hate the politics in work. I just posted about one of my back stabbing coworkers. The things is that I am I guess just a very nice and naive person because it always surprises me when this stuff happens to me...because I would never even think about doing it to someone else.

Good luck and hopefully this all blows over.

 

[phoenixgirl]

This reminds me of advice my cooperating teacher gave me back in the day. She told me that she had been burned by other teachers before, so her M.O. was to just stay in her room and focus on the kids. That''s why she was there to begin with.

This is great advice, and I managed to follow it through a year of middle school hell and my first year teaching high school when I was just so grateful they let me transfer, but then my guard got down and I found myself having to fight these stupid battles all the time. Just defending myself against machinations to get the honors classes that the department chair had promised me was a battle, and don''t get me started on my friend whom the narcissist tried to block from taking over her AP classes. She told so many lies to so many people to block my friend getting the classes that I don''t know how she kept them all straight. She even employed the aid of this teacher who had already been kicked out of the specialty center for poor teaching (and you know how hard it is to be demoted in the public school system) and convinced her that she was the obvious choice for teaching AP and should fight my friend for it.

And the wimpy department chair didn''t believe us, so we had to fight back behind the scenes (until the narcissist realized she was not going to get her way and unleashed the fury of hell on the unsuspecting chair, who then conveniently forgot that I had ever predicted this would happen). It was such a headache. I think the biggest ace that we had in our pocket was that the narcissist never knew we were really on to her. After the poor puppet teacher lost out on teaching AP, it was too much embarrassment for her and she took a crappy job in another county.

I just heard this story the other day about the old narcissist and her crony. A coworker of mine got married two years ago, and they played the game with her where they pretend to be really interested in your life (they played it with my friend when they were trying to get info to use against her in the AP battle). They kept asking about the wedding and saying how excited they were to be going . . . but my coworker wasn''t planning on inviting them! She did just to be nice, and they never RSVPed, never gave a gift, nothing. They were just saying those things to f--- with her!

Oh, and get this, when we snuck into their rooms after they left to check out their furniture, they each had SEVEN bookcases! They had been squirreling them away as other people left over the years. Guess how many I have . . . two, and I have to store all these textbooks for my English and journalism classes and other classes that meet in my room. So I asked one of the teachers moving in there if I could take one (she might not have known if I just did it without asking, but I was afraid it would come back to bite me), and she was like, "Oh, I don''t know, what if I need it?" Finally I guilted her into it. This is the same teacher who asked me if she needed to plug her laptop in or if it just charged miraculously without being connected to anything, so it wasn''t too difficult.

The old biddies got their comeuppance in the end when nobody contributed to their retirement gift fund or attended their little soiree. They stood outside my room loudly talking about a lack of social graces which obviously really convicted me and made me repentent.

The year before we all went to great lengths to give the department chair a great retirement party and gift, but that was because, despite being unusually scary for somebody under five feet tall, she was a genuinely nice person whom we were sorry (but happy for her) to see go.


So anyway, the lessons are:

1) don''t trust anyone with anything that could get you in trouble unless you have a true friend at work
2) be on good terms with all because you never know when someone will turn nasty
3) don''t be afraid to fight when necessary, but be careful to assess the risks
4) stay in your room as much as possible and remember that you''re there for the kids
5) don''t worry about revenge because karma will work it out in the end
6) don''t drive your husband crazy by telling him all your work horror stories

7) if you find yourself 60 years old and f---ing with sweet, young teachers just for the hell of it, do us all a favor and retire already

I think Benjamin Franklin said it best: "Be civil to all; sociable to many; familiar with few; friend to one; enemy to none."

 

[phoenixgirl]

OK, I know I've been in a posting frenzy and need to get off the computer (I think I am trying not to read the summer reading books I assigned -- school doesn't start until after labor day but I really should start now), but here's one last story.

To illustrate the point that karma wins in the end . . .

My first year the only job I could get was at this crappy middle school. The kids were rough, but the worst part was the administration went so far to tiptoe around parents that they didn't support teachers at all (even when a girl stole a book from me and her mom told me, "Well, don't you steal nothing from her!" as a retort, I had to have this lame conference where the AP took their side against me, the vicious theft accuser). So anyway, with the help of the county English specialist to whom I will always be grateful, I managed to finagle a transfer, but not before the principal lied to me. She told me that of course she would be happy to let me transfer, but the problem was that I probably wouldn't be able to find anywhere with an opening. Well, being proactive me, I then produced my list of the current openings I could interview for. She tried to demur but she never said I couldn't transfer. When I got the interview process rolling, she then came back and said, no, she hadn't ever said I could transfer and implied that I had lied to HR. I'm still proud that despite being worn out and in over my head and only 22, I said, "Well, I'm sorry to hear that, and no matter what happens, you'll have to replace me next year" and was able to wait (just barely) until I left her office to cry. Then the specialist got the head of HR to go over her head and put me in the transfer pool and luckily I got an offer at a school I love (when I think about the kids, not the politics).

Two years later a fight broke out at 8th grade field day at my old school, and an investigation revealed that no administrators were even present in the whole building at the time. The principal got reassigned to being in charge of some program in the central office, which is as close as you can get to being fired (sad, isn't it). No matter how much power or connections people have, I think they usually get what they deserve in the end.

OK, really must turn off this darn thing now!

 

[ladykemma]

update: three days later my boss is treating me like i have the plague. my supplies that i ordered were given to others. i feel sad, confused, abandoned, and angry. i do not have what i need for labs next week.

do i need to confront? i do not want a bad year.

curious - I do not need to work. what happens to teachers who just walk out? do they ever work again? this is just venting not seroius.

 

[ladykemma]

more update:

remember in Braveheart where the red headed muscular friend challenges him to a competion. mel gibson says "you win!" before he engages in a fight.

That will be my motto. You Win. and not engage in a fight. this is bigger than I am and I am not willing to engage in this fight. You win.

my husband pointed out to me tonight that every year this lady selects a pariah and runs them off. he said it seems she needs someone to pick on. looks like I''m it. she hasn''t got anyone to pick on since she ran off the other one last year. (he was a horrible teacher and needed to be gone, though) i on the other hand I almost got teacher of the year in our school.