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2001-09-02 - 1:21 a.m. Yesterday I didn't post. I am having a problem with one of my co-workers in that she somehow manages to talk me into doing things I really don't want to do. Last year toward the end of the year she asked me if I would help her out with Drama Club this year. I thought that would be okay, and would be fun to go on some field trips with them. She made it sound like the main thing I would be doing is going to the meetings and sometimes going on field trips. I was okay with that. Next thing I know, she asks me to do publicity for the plays. I am not really a person that is that interested in drama. I didn't even go to the plays last year and the idea of calling people up to do advertisement stuff makes me want to die. She made it sound like I would be helping her out, not doing the whole thing. So I agreed. Next thing I know, she is handing me this book to read on doing publicity and has this long ass list about things I would need to do INCLUDING WRITING A NEWSPAPER ARTICLE FOR THE LOCAL PAPER. What?!?!? I assumed the job would entail helping make a few posters and making a call to the newspaper so THEY could write an article. I have never written a newspaper article in my life, and do not plan to. That is on the bottom portion of things I ever want to write. So, somehow, I need to tell this woman that I did not understand what I was getting myself into. It's one thing to sign on to do extra stuff that involves spending more time with students, something I enjoy, it is quite another to sign on to do extra stuff that has nothing to do with interacting with kids. If I had extra time on my hands, which I will not, I would spend it writing grant proposals for things I am interested in (improving my reading program). The reason I am especially resenting this woman right now is because she was supposed to be my mentor when I came to work here last year. She has never given me much help or mentoring. In fact, I would say it is the other way around. The first thing she did was at a department meeting toward the end of the year, she said she was "tired of working with the younger kids and wanted older kids". This was as a meeting with me, the other English teacher, and our principal. It was directed at me because I had all of the seniors and two classes of juniors. I didn't know what to say. I wanted to keep those but somehow I ended up saying I was very attached to the seniors but I guess I could give up the two junior classes and take on sophomores. I was assuming that I would only be doing two sophomore classes, but if you read my last entry, you know how that turned out. Anyway, here in Oregon, sophomore year is a lot more difficult to teach than any other year because of the way our standards-based stuff works. Sophomores are tested for reading and writing at this level. They also are supposed to do all of their work samples at this level. This means a lot more work samples to make up, a lot less time planning what you want to, and a lot more tedious and difficult grading. Fine, I agreed to it. But ultimately she caused more work for me because she was complaining in front of others and I felt I couldn't say no. At this same meeting she tried to ask the other English teacher if she could trade rooms with him because she wanted a bigger place to store costumes. He said no, he liked his room and it would be a pain to switch. About a week later, my principal came up to me and said that she was coveting MY room and wondered if we could trade. She liked it because there is an office attached to it and the old darkroom is attached to that. I felt unable to use the office this year because they put this phone in there that students weren't supposed to use (I wanted to use it as sort of a computer lab). Anyway, this teacher's room is okay except it is all by itself in the hallway and you can't hear the bells ringing, which is a big problem for me. I had to teach seventh period in there for awhile because the wheelchair lift was broken and one of my kids is in a wheelchair and couldn't get there. I hated being in that room, it was just uncomfortable and had a bad vibe to it. So I told the principal no. I also thought it was really rude how she went about it--she gave the other English teacher the courtesy of asking him, but she went above me to the principal. She didn't ask me directly. It almost seems as if she hoped she could convince him that I should move and have him tell me that I had to. Luckily he left it up to me. Anyway, somehow I said that she couldn't have my room but generously offered the office--something I didn't have to do. So then she asked me if she could put a mirror in my room for when they get ready for plays. I basically told her I didn't think that would be good--how distracting would it be for the kids to have a large mirror on the wall of my room?!?!?! Another thing I did for her last year was made all these phone calls about getting a junior lit. book teacher edition. All year, I went without a teacher's edition, then when she switched with me she said, "Oh, well a teacher's edition would be good to have." I ended up looking into a used textbook company for her, calling and getting it ordered. She also asked me to pick up some t-shirts for her for one of the plays last year. Overall, I just feel like this has been a very one-sided working relationship. She is always wanting me to do stuff for her, whereas I never ask her to do anything for me. I really need to let her know that I can't do this publicity crap for her. If I had known what it entailed, I wouldn't have done it. The thing is that I absolutely HATE calling people I don't know so it won't be the slightest bit enjoyable. I would rather do bus duty for a month than do this. The thing about this is that I am really bad about confrontation and I am afraid she will get mad at me since i said I would do it before. I spoke to my mom about it and my mom said I should definitely say I can't do it because I wouldn't have agreed to it had I known. My mom thinks she is clearly using me. I am all for helping out other people and getting involved with the school. I volunteered last year to chaperone dances, I went to different sporting events, and I helped organize graduation events. But this is really not much to do with the kids and more about her getting me to do her stuff so she has less to do. Another thing that bothered me about yesterday is that we had a meeting about our test scores for the statewide testing last year. Not surprisingly, our scores were crappy. But the whole plan of action is really making me sick. Basically we are going to target the group of kids that are closest to passing of the sophomores and try to develop some sort of thing to help them pass. We have money to do this. This is justifyed by saying that this is a population of kids that typically are ignored--the lower kids get special ed. money and services and the gifted kids get money and services as well. But still. If what we are really concerned with is helping all kids learn, how can we justify not putting any money into targeting the kids that don't have a chance of passing? It's not a problem to say to the kids that passed: "Hey, you're not in this special program because you already passed this test." It is a huge problem saying to the kids that are lowest, "You're not in this special program because basically we realized you have no chance of passing, even if you improve your score by a lot. We have given up on you and basically think it is more important to focus on those that do have a chance of passing. Because really, all that matters to us is the scores and how we look on our statewide report card." And sorry, not all of the students that don't have a chance of passing are considered special ed. The whole thing makes me sick. I tried to convey how appalled I was in our meeting and other people said that those other kids get money for the aforementioned reasons. Well you know what? This middle population of kids are the ones that schools are geared toward! Classes are never really about meeting the needs of the gifted kids or the special needs kids, they are about the average kid. The other thing is that regardless of the money and extra services, the special ed. kids at our school ARE NOT getting what they need. Just for clarification, special ed. kids at our school aren't mentally disabled or anything like that. Most of them have learning disabilities (some can barely read) or ADD or ADHD. There are special ed. assistants in some classes if there are a number of special ed kids in the class. However, the special ed. assistant I had last year was not very helpful at all. The only thing she really did was take notes and did a little bit of working one on one with the kids. She also was often late or didn't show up. I basically couldn't count on her to help me out so I was kind of on my own with all 17-20 kids who were very needy. Anyway, I signed up to be on the committee to help plan our action plan on how to get the kids to pass. I'm hoping I can get something going for getting the entire school focused on getting the kids reading more. Maybe this can be something positive, I don't know. I am glad that we have the long weekend before school starts. I am getting more and more excited. I am excited about the sophomores because I will not have had any of them before and it will be nice to start things completely fresh. I can be as mean as I want to be ;) I went to Justin's yesterday and had a better time than last time. We ended up going to Hollywood Video to rent a movie. They had all previously viewed videos for 4 for $20. I ended up getting: Almost Famous, Nurse Betty, Bounce, and All the Pretty Horses. I am excited, especially over Almost Famous. I really love that movie. I have a DVD player too, but for five dollars each I couldn't pass that up. Justin ended up getting four movies too. We watched Remember the Titans last night. I had never seen it and had seen bad reviews but I really really enjoyed it. I thought it would be really corny and sentimental. It was a little bit, but mainly it was just funny and enjoyable. I haven't enjoyed a movie so much in a long time. I felt almost as if I should have bought it after seeing it. Today we went to the mall. The thing about living out here on the coast is that there are no malls anywhere (other than outlet). There is not a good mall where Justin lives either. We thought we could go to the mall in Salem and that it would be a fairly good mall but it ended up being one of those small-town malls that don't have any good stores too. The only good store it had was Old Navy, and you know how that is. If it's good it's good, but if it's bad it's bad. It had lame clothes this time. I was so sad because I wanted to get a few new clothes. I got paid today and it was a bit more than usual because they didn't take out my union dues. I'm not sure why--maybe because we are going to possibly be going on strike? If we do, I thought it was going to happen in October. I think maybe the union decided to do it because we have been working without a contract? Who knows. I don't mind the extra money. :) I was going to stay over at Justin's house again, I kind of wish I did now because I just wasted this evening instead of working on planning anyway. Sigh...at least tomorrow I can get started as soon as I get up. I am really happy in some ways and really overwhelmed and unhappy in others. I hope that everything goes well this year. I am really thinking about maybe looking for work somewhere else at the end of this year. I just don't like it here.
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