nola-byrinth

my email inbox for work is perhaps the most depressing thing i can think of.

well, that and the classroom at 1:15 when the kids are coming back and i'm

just

not

ready

for them. usually this is precipitated by my entire planning period being taken up by some manner of side talking bullshit--

if i have to hear another anecdote about what my tired ass old administrators did in their first grade classrooms that would be "wonderful" for me to implement in my room... i will be very aggravated.

and usually a really half-assed suggestion anyway, in which most of the details are sort of skimmed over--

"i used to have my students do a project, like some type of... project..., and then put it on the wall so, you know, it would look so cute and everything... and you can do things that like that, it's good."

"we would spend a certain amount of time doing some group- er.. cooperative- learning activities, where they would work with those fraction things, and it was fun for them, and educational, you know... so you can always get them doing that, and they learn it. it's just better when they see it so they can understand it, and you could use technology too."


my ever favorite was this afternoon, 55 minutes after I was given notice for a meeting to take place in 4 minutes, which was then 51 minutes before the end of my planning period... during which i had scheduled a team meeting to do rti referrals...

"and miss gershman, as the team leader, you can work out some kind of time management plan to get your paperwork done, like you could meet during your planning to get those rti referrals taken care of..."

let's hear that one again: you brought me here on my only planning period this week to spend 51 minutes telling me that I need to use my planning period more wisely?


and then, i thought, oh, right... it's not a real school. it's the kind of place where they give you so much to do that it can't all be done, and then get irritated with the people who try to actually do it because they're making it really difficult to blame them for not being able to do it.

like if you built a maze with no solution and then had to kill the person who diligently tried to get out so they wouldn't out you for having built a shitty maze.

and the game, i haven't gotten the hang of it yet. you must do everything, indeed, so since you have to do it, you might as well not do it well, because it's more important that it is in place than that it is worth it. if you can check a box, you must be doing something, and if you can staple the form to another semi-related form than, wow, you are on your game...

we ask: did you do it? and never, did it work? we ask: did you make a copy of it? and never, is the original worth the paper it's printed on? we ask: did you teach it? and never, did they learn it? and then the scores come and we are 69th out of 68 and no one wonders why...

except the people who are being blamed for it; they wonder why. and the answer is already "someone else..." even before they get to the question.

i guess that's why they call me "someone else..."





that was a hell of a rant.



and then it was midnight. and i hit another wall.