It's still Wednesday night, so this is my second entry today, and the first entry is here. I am going back and forth over what happened today at school, thinking about what happened that I expected, what happened that I didn't expect, what surprised me, and what made me mad. Here's the summary of the action:For reasons not necessary to go into, one of the assistant principals decided that, henceforth, we must have every student who comes to the library during their free lunch periods sign in. He didn't ask me to monitor what they are doing there, but instead to station myself at the library door and make sure everyone signs in. He is very comfortable with the fact that this would make it impossible to do my actual job of being a librarian. I should point out that our school has open lunch, so kids can go to Mars as long as they make it back for next period, and that, due to the layout of the library and lack of personnel, we have never been able to supervise properly during the lunch period, or enforce any sort of signing-in before. This all broke about ten minutes before the end of the school day.
I was not surprised that despite my returning immediately to the library and informing the SCM that this new duty was being imposed upon us, he left on cue ten minutes later as if he had been shot out of a gun. In fact, when I came back from the office, he was sitting at his desk with his jacket on, all zipped up, with his backpack over his shoulder. There was still a class full of kids working in the library.
I was hurt that the administrator involved implied that I was more concerned with maintaining the status quo than possibly saving a kid's life, and that I was certainly less concerned about kids than he was. (Which I later called him on, as I mentioned in the last entry.)
I prepared a plan to sign kids in anyway, even though I know that it won't work, and I put it into place before I left at the end of the day.
I was touched and a little surprised when I explained the whole thing to the Colleague, who, as the president of her union -- which is office personnel, not teachers -- is very concerned with her people's jobs not being changed out from under them, but said immediately that we would all work together and if I had to help kids with other things, she and/or the A.V. aide, who is only part-time and not even there through all the lunch periods, would pitch in and stand by the door. This brought me a great deal of comfort, which led me to wonder why
I have been so angry ever since I got home, even though the situation is more workable than I originally thought it would be. And I have been mulling it over all damn day, and then I remembered that
I was told outright by the administrator -- no implication, straightforwardly said out loud, twice -- that he could do my job better than I can. I even mentioned it in my previous entry -- he had said he could do it "100% and do it right"; he said it the same way twice -- but I hadn't realized that this is what was keeping me angry all day and into the evening. I did suggest to him at one point that perhaps he should be the one who was doing it, then, but I did later apologize if I sounded "flip", because that was not so much my intention, and antagonizing someone who has the principal's ear is not a good way to be taken seriously. I am almost hoping that the principal does call me in to discuss this tomorrow, although I don't anticipate that he will because he's fairly non-confrontational, and if he does, I will ask that a representative of my union be present, which is something I have never ever done or had to do. And then I will ask for an apology. (First, however, I'd like to know how this guy, who is only an assistant administrator, had any right to set library policy without going through the principal first. Who is he to decide that no one gets reference help for two periods a day?)
I am so sick of people who haven't the faintest clue what I do and who think that they know all about it. Like the people who have planned the new library without bothering to find out how a library works. This genius, this assistant administrator (which, you may recall, was abbreviated Adm. Ass. in the wonderful school novel Up the Down Staircase, so she called him Admiral Ass), is formerly a teacher of an A.P. subject -- that's Advanced Placement -- in the social sciences who never once in ten years brought his class to the library or did research with them. If he ever comes to the library now, it's because he needs a favor, like having a sign laminated. Yeah, I do that, too.
Now that I've got this all written out, I'm going to post it and then watch me some good Sawyer on Lost tonight. If I don't post tomorrow, I haven't gone AWOL, I'm just shopping with R after school and then going to see her new apartment. But I'll probably post anyway. You know me.
