“I was asked… I was told…”
December 1, 2007 am31 6:13 am
This has been a lousy week. Sick. Irritable. Making mistakes. Short-tempered. (and didn’t blog, but that’s no biggie).
Good week for phrases that annoy me.
- “Whatever” gets a rise out of me. I don’t like it. I don’t accept it. And I answer in kind. Only, I decide what “in kind” means. Trust me, it’s ugly. But there’s worse.
- If you tell me “I was asked to….” we might already be in trouble. I will understand, likely as not, that you are unwilling to take responsibility for what you are communicating, that you are aware that I might be displeased, and that you are unwilling to tell me who in fact is responsible. I will ask you “Who asked you?” But it might already be too late. I had an AP who used to say this – she’s now a notoriously bad Bronx Principal. It was her inimitable way of saying “Do this without asking questions.” It came up this week, and went as bad as you might guess.
Other (grumpiness-related?) problems from this week:
- I will check calendar before ok’ing any meeting, trips, appointments. I will check calendar before ok’ing any meeting, trips, appointments. I will check calendar before ok’ing any meeting, trips, appointments. I will remember this.
- Don’t send me a change of date notification, and make it look like a confirmation (“date changed” in the subject line might help). Converse: trust that any significant e-mail is disguised.
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JD2718 
I gotta tell you, jd, this has been a really weird week for teachers. in general, it looks like we’ve got a serious brain drain in the system. something to think about.
What else has been going on?
I’m coming out of my annual Christmas disappearance. About to do the New Years disappearance and trying to catch up. It was the most awful week of school I have ever had (even worse than the inner city classes I used to have). I know what you mean by those change of schedules. When my calendar disappeared on my computer and the nurse wanted to schedule a student/parent/teacher meeting, I refused to schedule because of these problems. All dates are changed. I can’t even tell anymore if I updated my calendar or not. So I just go to everything and there is never a meeting being held. I think we’re all nuts actually. I can tell, after reading what I wrote here, that I am not recovered yet.