teacher's meeting

you can discern that you are stuck in a teacher's meeting at the school in my town when:

...it starts 25 minutes late, without fail every single month.

...cell phones blare out obnoxious music, erupting in song one by one until it seems as if practically every single teacher has a larger list of friends and enjoys greater popularity than you do.

...a solid 30 minutes are dedicated to a screaming/shouting fest, in which the goal is for each person to argue their case for charging $50 for diploma reprints because that isn't unreasonable for students with $500 cell phones to pay.

...during said shouting match, you nearly forget how to to think and completely lose sight of the reasons why you are sitting there anyways.

...you take a big swig of water out of your spaceship-like aluminum water bottle only to slug down a big fat fly, or worse... which essentially is okay because the other teachers- who think you're weird for having such an alien contraption near you always- cannot see that you just gulped down a whole lotta protein, or worse. well, this isn't actually related to the meeting, but it DID happen to me today.

...it becomes clearer and clearer as the director loses more and more control during the scream fest that it is not so strange to imagine why there is no control in the classroom, and that while you might exhibit lax discipline policies, you are by no means responsible for the utter chaos that is your daily routine in the classroom.

...you are told that you do not make your 6th grade students write enough in their notebooks (which they rarely bring to class) and you sit silent in the face of criticism knowing it is a moot point to form a rebuttal centered on the fact that you pay your own money to make copies of written exercises for the students who never bring their books or notebooks, that and you would love it if the town had a recycling bin to toss them in because they're gathering dust on your floor.

...teachers genuinely allow themselves to get angry at one another over how many votes are being cast by whom for said diploma reprints and searing divisions become verbal brawls.

...the meeting ends with a very grim, yet serious discussion of the director's goal, yes goaL singular: to keep the school open. discussions about not integrating parallels in the same grade are quelled because having excessive amounts of roma students among the others might encourage those others to seek education in larger towns. the goal is repeated: to ensure all teachers have work for the next year.





it's been a rough day. i even went for an extra long run- clocked in at 1.5 hours- which is absurd for me and i still don't feel waves of happy, positive warmness washing over me.

don't take any of this seriously.