2008 January 24 « chatter from the Library Monkey

sometimes you pack in the aggravation

January 24, 2008 at 12:24 am | In Difficult people, Politics, co-workers, office politics | No Comments

sometimes you pack in the aggravation

What a day. I think it has ended, who knows. Just had dinner and on the way home, I was stopped by a trooper. One headlight is a little higher than another. Not anything I would get a ticket for, but something I wouldn’t want to be drunk when he stopped me. He said that in a round about way. Those things frustrate me, though I have to admit the guy wasn’t such a jerk — and troopers in our area are known to be jerks.

As an example, we don’t have a D.A.R.E. program at my school because the ‘dare officer’ has threatened kids. I forget the exact scenario, but the officer thought a kid was bullying his son, so the officer bullied he kid. From what I understand of the guy he was saying was: “Only I am going to be too hard on my kids.”

Let’s see what else. At 1 p.m. it was time to take my lunch, but my aide was proctoring regents tests. About eight kids showed up in the library. I thought they were kids who had either finished a regents or who were not taking a regents. They were typical unsupervised kids, a little swearing and not doing anything.

I decided I would go down and grab my lunch and eat it in the library so I could keep an eye on the kids. In the computer lab were two teachers, so I asked if one would watch the kids in the library. The business teacher said: “Why are they causing trouble.” I told him I just wanted to get my lunch — and I didn’t want to go down a list of everything they had been able to do wrong in five minutes

The business teacher then proceeds to tell me it is his class. One that he felt was okay to: 1) not be teaching and b) to leave completely unattended. At that point I just said: “O, I am going to lunch.”

The day had a similar start. Yesterday I went to the high school meeting. On the agenda was something about the discussion of classroom environment. They didn’t get to it because there was an adviser. But at the last few minutes ’star’ mentioned she was the reason for the agenda and she had surveyed the 10th graders who:

felt no one was positive with them

get too much homework

when they don’t understand it, no one believes them

I should add that star had said she slinked down to the principal’s office to discuss this (principal wasn’t there and ’slinked’ is my word). That is to say, she presented her point first and got the ball in her court. The general tenure is trying to create a classroom environment that is equal for all students

I mentioned it to my aide, especially since she has a study hall with those kids and I don’t have a lot of direct contact with them and then I suggested she go to the Thursday meeting where the agenda would be continued. She kind of said yes, but reminded me she has a son who is a 10th grader and wondered if she could just show up.

My response was I didn’t know, but she should still go, but I would e-mail the team to make sure it was okay. And repeated that she had one of the toughest study halls to manage and why not let her go.

The principal wrote back to my e-mail yes, but star showed up first thing in the morning to comment on it. Of course the aide was there. star made a point of telling me I didn’t understand (insult me) adding it was more a discussion for people like me who teach the students. I reminded her that the aide worked with the students in the study hall. Then star insulted the aide by saying

After star left I apologize to the aide, to which she said something like: “what do you expect from star.”

We talked about it more and I added, well you should still go, unless star gets to the principal and you can’t. Then about noon the principal came by to ask if a class could take place in the library at a certain time — I thought for sure it was to tell me to not let aides go to star’s meetings.

So far, I am not arrested and the aide is going to a boring meeting that I would not like to be at.

The Tigers