Done Wrong
There's an uneasy calm for me, currently, at school. I'm past my angry stage, where I glare at the administrators and prepare my offensive against them. I'm settled back into my fly-under-the-radar stance. I do my job (and do it well, I might add) while rarely leaving my room. Still, I do have to leave my area of the building from time to time, and if I happen to pass an administrator, I'll smile and nod and make small talk. It's not their fault that my superintendent is a douchebag, and if I'm not getting fired and I haven't worked there long enough to take the buyout they're offering (I'm a year or two shy... ugh), I'd better make nice.
So now that I'm not ignoring them, I'm noticing things that the administration does that bother me. For one thing, they have their cell phones on their belts and they answer them all the time - meetings, in the hallway, in the office. I have nothing against cell phones in the school. I'd like to be able to use mine. Teachers, however, are forbidden to have them - even, we're warned, during conference periods or lunch. I comply with this grudgingly, although sometimes I do need to make phone calls during my lunch period. The logic behind this is that our students aren't allowed to use phones, so we shouldn't be able to use them. The principal instructs us on how to deal with colleagues who we catch using their phones. It's a huge vendetta. So why, oh why, should the administration be able to use them?
But there's another double standard that bothers me more. Two years ago, when I was newly single, my sitter's dad was very sick. The sitter called me at 6 in the morning and explained that she couldn't watch SC. I couldn't miss school that day and I had no one to watch SC. I called around and talked to a former student of mine that could watch him. She could be to school to pick him up at 8. Classes start at 7:15. So I brought SC to school. Heather (the sitter) came and got SC at 8:00. He didn't disturb my class; he sat in the corner and colored until she was there. But one of the administrators saw him here, and she called me in to her office and sternly told me that I should never bring SC to school again. She spend 25 minutes telling me over and over again what a horrible thing it was to bring my son into school. And maybe she was right. I'm not arguing that, although it was kind of an emergency. SC and I are pretty much alone out here. There wasn't anywhere else to turn. But I sucked it up and never brought SC again. It was no big deal... lesson learned.
But this year, twice, I have seen one of the assistant principals and his 4 year old son at school. The first time, the assistant principal walked by me, his son grasping on to his hand, and I was a little annoyed. Later that day, I saw the head principal walk the little kid outside to "help" him with monitoring the student parking lot. I remembered all the reasons that I couldn't bring my son for an hour to school in an emergency, and I felt like I didn't matter. There was an obvious double standard. And then, just this week, the same principal had his same kid in the hallway. I smiled at the kid as he walked by - he's in preschool with SC - but then I realized that the assistant principal had brought his son to school again. The man is from our city. He and his wife have tons of family in the area. Why in the world would he bring his kid to school?
If the administration in our school want to be respected, then they need to hold themselves to the same standards that they hold everyone else. That means that they can't use their cell phones in the halls, they can't bring their kids to school, they can't listen to some teacher's requests and not others. What kind of a work environment do they expect if they treat themselves as though they are above the law? I know that the next time I get called in and yelled at (you know it's going to happen, it's ME), I'm going to ask if the administration is held to the same standards as the staff. If I'm held accountable, they should be too.
So, even though I'm fake nice to the administration again, I know that I count less than the people in charge. I have a feeling that this is a lesson that all people have to learn at one time or another. The rules are just different for some people. The trick is to work your way around those rules and get yourself to a position where you can break the rules and get away with it. I just have to remember to not piss anyone off with my blatant sarcasm and keep flying under the radar.
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