Wednesday was the monthly meeting for a town group I volunteer for.  I give my time to a couple of different groups and I am starting to feel a bit stretched too thin.  I had previously quit this group once before when leadership and a member were getting a bit rude, demanding, and obnoxious.  When the leadership was ousted, I decided to rejoin and have been having a blast, for the most part.  There is one individual who is trying my patience, and Wednesday really tested me.  Our meetings are to be no longer than an hour and an half.  This could easily have been an hour.  It was at least two hours.  Our agenda was quite lengthy.  However, if this one woman would just shut her mouth, we could have gotten through the meeting in a jiffy.  

Let me give some background on this woman.  She lives in an impressive historic home in town.  It is larger than ours and she and the hubby have no children either.  She works from home.  They are clearly very financially comfortable.  She was paired with me one clean up day.  As I am picking weeds and bagging garbage, she gets chatty.  When she finds out what my job is, her response is "Oh, you teachers make good money.  I have a friend who is a school librarian and she makes a good six figures.  You teachers have it good."  I took a deep breath and informed her that I in all likelihood will never see six figures despite having paid for all my education out of pocket, no reimbursement.  And no, we do not have it easy.  She reacted as if she knew better and did not believe me.  

That "I know better" attitude comes with her to every single meeting.  She has an opinion on everything and it is counter to anyone else's suggestion.  Every single person can contribute and agree and support each other or disagree in a supportive way, except for her.  I believe the only reason she listens to others is with the sole purpose of letting them know that she knows better.  It has gotten to the point that when there are calls for help during the week, I refrain because I know she will be there.  She hears but she does not listen.  For my sanity, I have decided I must not attend every meeting.  I think I can handle every other right now.  

And lest you think this proves some of my colleagues correct that I cannot work with other people, I offer this:  The current president of our organization is a former alderman with whom I had a major disagreement when I was on our Historic Preservation Commission, ending in my resignation.  Because of our shared love for the town, intense work ethic, and ability to forgive, we put that behind us and get along very well now.  But this other woman...  Well, the town is not behind her actions.  Making herself look tops is, and I have a problem with that.

Which gets me to this job of mine.  We all know that the generation we teach has little ability to pay attention for extended periods of time.  Sound bits and snippets are all they can handle.  On top of that, the first bit of information to get to them is what is believed.  They have no ability to take all sides in and assess a situation based on what they know, observe, and hear from all sides.  We can try to fight that tendency all we want, but we have not figured out a way to fix it, yet.

That kind of thing becomes so dangerous and damaging to personal relations when it comes to rumours.  There is an awful lot of playing devil's advocate on the part of us teachers.  And I find it frustrating but I take it all as part of my constantly evolving job.  What I have a very hard time dealing with is when this is how my colleagues operate.  I  pull into the first parking space this morning and reflect on how a colleague believes I think that is "my space."  Cute.  But I have never said nor believed that any parking space belongs to me.  It is a first come, first served deal with parking here.  On the days a colleague beats me to work, I think "Good on you, you early riser."  Have I ever thought "He's in my space?"  Hell no.  And so it goes.  There are not enough hours in this day for me to address all the rumours running wild in this place and the ridicuous and hurtful things adults will believe.

And why do I think these supposed adults behave like our students?  I am still figuring that out.  I have noticed that the majority of my colleagues who came into the field in the generation below me are like this.  They are incredibly competitive and mask that with a facade of cooperation.  They talk out of both sides of their mouths.  They tell the children they are to be respected but get stinking drunk at establishments in our sending districts for all to see.  They talk about all their grand lesson ideas without putting in the time and research to create a plan that measures up.  They slap things together at the last minute.  Some of them revel in having a persona that the students worship.  Note I said worship, not respect. 

 

That aura, the self professed "hard work", and on and on, are not things that make a good teacher.  It puts you on the same adolescent maturity level as your students.  And we are supposed to help bring them into adult maturity.  Put in the time doing the research, practice runs with an assignment, creating amazing presentations, figuring out what problems your kids might have during the course of an assignment.  Don't slap a video on and a last minute power point.  Then, if you have the time, go out, have your social life, but far away from here.  Think carefully about what you say in the classroom and how that correlates to what you are seen doing outside of school.  Because they see, and they talk.  And they are not always wrong.  And ass kissing will only get a worker so far in this school.  Things are changing.