I started off writing this letter to my principal a couple of times today during staff development. I didn't send anything yet, but I 'm going to work it out here.
Mr. W.
I appreciated seeing you this morning and I was very glad to see you. It made me happy that you said that you were happy to see me. I appreciate that you were dispatched to counsel with me and the other "bad" art teachers after the reported bad behavior of our group of teachers last Thursday. I am grateful to see your smiling face and even more grateful for your hug. You are wise and I understand that you had an equally painful staff development last week. I edify your character and strength and inspiration to me as you tell me that I can make it through this.
I'm grateful that when I said that our presenter was a strange that you said that you understood that she was unusual.
I'm concerned that our person in charge does not have pure motives. She's under qualified. She taught a few years in the district and was rendered "redundant" at her school and was not picked up by any of the schools that interviewed her. She talks a good talk and apparently knows all the good buzzwords that are important these days. She has been promoted to her level of incompetence. I think she is a sweet person. My chihuahua is sweet, but she doesn't understand that she shouldn't run out into the street. Our person cannot, however, teach. She cannot answer simple questions. She reads convoluted text that I don't think she understands, and says that we don't know the answers yet but that we've got to figure them out. How can she teach us anything if she can't answer a single question? I'm concerned that she is working on some kind of post graduate program and that she is setting up our whole district as her guinea pig. Is that ethical?
Let's rewrite all the curriculum for a subject for one of the largest urban districts in the US. That would be a good resume builder. That could feed the idiocracy that is in charge of educating students in this country. Let's elect this person as Secretary of Education because she knows how to doubletalk the idjits in charge.
I became physically ill during the session today. I tried really hard to be pleasant and I tried really hard to understand the idiocy that was presented to me. I didn't act out and I didn't say any bad words.
Here am I in receptive mode. . .
Here is the input. . .
"We have paradigms of postmodernism that we need to relate to our students' cultural awareness. We need to bring relativity to them so that they employ inquiry learning."
WTF?
Am I slow?
Okay, I'm supposed to present an "ill-structured problem." I'm really not sure what that means. I got the point where we are supposed to make the kids think. I get that. I've always gotten that. I believe in making the kids think. I thought that was our job. I just don't understand what an "ill-structured problem" is.
OH, we're supposed to take our kids to the liberry (seriously this was said so many times) and in the liberry we are supposed to have them hook up with images that could not always be appropriate. But they are part of the curriculum that we are supposed to have them look at.
I'm just so appalled at the further dumbing down of America. I'm going to have to check with my friend the liberrian to see if she has time to fit in 70 sections of art classes into her limited space. She's going to freak out when I tell her that we are supposed to spend 11/14 hours doing research rather than making art. On a good day the library can only serve the computer needs of half of one of our classes.
Teacher, I have some feelings. I'm insecure and it makes me want to cut myself. So I cut myself because that's my feelings. One of the images on our wall today was of a wrist cut with a razor blade.
It's sad when it is the teachers who want to cut themselves because they have to put up with this nonsense.
