It's Fun To Stay at The...

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Marginally fun, really. It was a Girls Only Trip. [Boys stayed behind for their "Empowerment Conference"] We waited about a half an hour for the buses to arrive, MFT and I loading up the one bus that was on time with our respective Advisories and letting them get all silly in the bus. Copious fretting about bathing suits and skirt lengths and hair-do's getting wet and when we arrived, the big shocker: "You cannot wear a t-shirt or shorts over your suit in the pool."

You would think we had required them to swim naked. It was a strange mix of girls who were angry that we made them wear one-pieces or tankinis, and girls who kept their shirts firmly clamped to their bodies and opted not to swim. I remember the fear of adolescent bodies--there are so many insecurities for girls: am I too fat? too skinny? have a flat chest? have a gigantic chest? This in addition to some, um, grooming issues, that should best be discussed by their respective mothers, made for an interesting locker room scene. I was impressed with some girls abilities to be very kind and sensitive to other's needs, forming towel "shields" for others to change behind or lending a towel to a girl who was embarrassed and hadn't brought her own for the walk to the pool.

However, once they were in the water, the insecurities slowly vaporized. The confident girls went in first and the rest slowly followed, all donning neon bathing caps that they wore color-coded by Advisory Group [this was their choosing... team spirit I guess?] We were asked to watch in the Waiting Area behind a glass door which felt removed but alleviated our supervision responsibilities and let the life guards do their work. There was one mention of a girl trying to drown another girl. I think this was fictionalized but I cannot be certain.

Afterwards, we attended a fairly dull workshop which was more of a "let's listen to this guy talk and not really pay attention" and would have better serviced our girls had it been facilitated in a small group setting. I even think that having them run around on the playground for an hour might have been more valuable.

When we returned to school, we were served pizza courtesy of our principal and that was delicious except for this nasty girl who I had never had the pleasure of interacting with before was squirting water on other girls and when I intervened she told me to "get the f*ck out of [her] face" and my girls were like "oh no you did not just talk to Ms. ______ like that" and I could not get this girl to give me any respect which was frustrating and kind of ruined my day. I got over it when MFT hosted a full school game of Simon Says [teachers first, I won!] and then kiddies. I hate when a kid gets the best of me. It makes me feel tiny and immature like I'm in sixth grade again. Even when I use the line "Do you sincerely think that my feelings get hurt when sixth graders are 'mean' to me?" Because you know, that shouldn't bother me.

After dismissal, the staff met upstairs for a debriefing. Somehow we transitioned from how the day went to our principal lambasting us for lack of professionalism. He is not wrong. There has been an overwhelming feeling of "that's not my problem" going around school these days. On trips, teachers not paying attention to or cleaning up after their kids, lack of overall teamwork and neglect to our "mission" statement which sounds corny but it is true. Teachers just have this way of not pulling their weight and kind of disappearing into the background that goes relatively unnoticed by administration, or if it is noticed, it is not dealt with because quite frankly, there are no consequences for teachers! I mean, there is always the "U" rating or a letter in the file but it takes extremely egregious behaviors to merit the "U." There are empty threats but they always sound so ridiculous like we are being treated like children. It is the same thing as a behavior management system with kids--it's all smoke and mirrors. What can you really "do" to a child or a staff member who does not do what is expected of them? And in the case of staff, teachers are so frequently treated with a lack of professionalism characterized by threats of demerits and letters in files that they begin to resent the profession and become less and less likely to do what is asked of them. And at whose expense? The kids, of course.

Kids are messy. They are disorganized and flighty and silly and at times, disrespectful. But teachers are supposed to be ADULTS. We are not supposed to curse at children [complaint number 1 by principal] or be disrespectful to one another [complaint number 2] or generally shirk responsibilities that are expected in all jobs. In any other profession, if you were asked to do a mindless task that you thought was not important by your boss, you would do it. You might complain, but you would do it or else get "in trouble" or perhaps after a while, get fired. But in teaching, teachers get away with blowing off so many of their responsibilities or completing tasks long past when they are due and nothing really happens. In my old school, our principal, Darth Vader, would make your life hell if your bulletin board was a day late. This sucked. But in Darth's school, everything got done on time and nothing was overlooked. We all hated Darth, and our productivity was motivated by fear [or at least mine was] but at least things were organized. If you didn't pull your weight, you got crap for it. There were of course whole factions of the staff who were perpetually in the dog-house with Darth Vader in charge, so they pretty much didn't do anything. But us newbies, we were kept in line. I don't want my very nice principal to follow the lead of Darth and go all mean and nasty on us, but he does need to forge some kind of relationship of authority and power with his staff or else they will walk all over him.

I couldn't help but feel guilty during his speech on professionalism, paranoid perhaps that I had been guilty of not giving someone their due respect or saying something inappropriate to a child [after all, I was complimented on my subtle dissing skills just last week by Chanya...] or not communicating well with staff members, but to be honest, I think I am too guilty to not pull my weight, too OCD to let things slide, and far too controlling and impatient to leave things to other people and not pull my weight. There does come a point in the year though when you just think "Why bother bringing this up? What can happen with two weeks left?"

I'm sorry, I got home and had a bloody mary to shake off that principal chat and I think it made me a bit too chatty.

Cheers*