We were in the middle of eating dinner when the phone rang. My husband, being the tech-savvy guy that he is, not only has his cell phone hooked up to our voice mail from the land line, it makes a written transcription of what is said, so he is able to convey the message immediately. We were expecting a call from my father, so my husband checked his cell phone right away. It was not my father.
It was a robo call from the superintendent of the school district where I work. This is the man who has made my life more miserable than it already is for the last two years. You know, the man who wouldn’t call off school until the last second when the pandemic hit, the man who pushed us into hybrid before the schools were ready to start, before they had a plan, before all of the safety protocols had been put into place because he was being pressured to do so. This is the man who, in order to get what he wants, flat out repeatedly lies to the parents of the children for whom he’s responsible and the board that makes decisions based upon his guidance and leadership. He is the man who makes decisions that are clearly not in the students’ best interests, contrary to the office and responsibilities that he holds.
It was his minions, acting on his behalf, who ordered us to set up websites on Google sites, and after giving us a week to teach ourselves how to do that (no training was provided) and countless hours designing and creating and more time explaining our sites to the parents of our students, then told us to scrap them. He decided after the fact that they presented a security risk. (Shouldn’t he or one of his minions have researched this thoroughly enough before they wasted all that time and effort and…yes…taxpayer’s money to realize that risk? Not to mention making his teachers look like a bunch of idiots in front of the parents.)
He’s the one who made all the teachers learn Zoom and start using it to conduct our classes remotely only to decide a few months later that it wasn’t secure enough and made us all switch to Webex (again, without any training or help other than the website’s own videos). Then, come to find out, the fault did not lie with Zoom, which was a preferable tool to use for teaching than Webex. It was with people who were posting their meeting links publicly. (Duh!) Therefore, the same issues were occurring on Webex.
This is the man who wouldn’t allow me to remain teaching remotely when I asked, who coerced other teachers instead to go remote when they didn’t want to, who forced me to be teaching in four different modes simultaneously. (I’ve got news for you, bud. This is NOT what they meant by the definition of “hybrid.”) He also decreed that we would return to the buildings fully in person by March 15th while having no idea or concern about the details necessary to bring that about. He makes his proclamations and leaves the peons (a.k.a. teachers and principals) to sort it out. He made us return, even though all of the safety protocols were not in place. The masks he promised? Only one was ever given to me these past few months we’ve been attending in person. The face shield I was given was so flimsy, it didn’t hold up past the first week. The students were given plexiglass shields for their tables, but there was a shield that only covered a third of the horseshoe-shaped table I use and none for my desk. After we’d already been in the physical school buildings for several months, they finally installed some air purifiers throughout the rooms in the building. (This is after he’d had his minion drone (dare I say, lie) on and on for over an hour one night at a very lengthy board meeting spewing numbers and data that were completely false, testifying to the adequacy of the schools’ ventilation systems to provide fresh, uncontaminated air throughout the buildings.)
He allowed parents anything they wanted. I refer to this as “Burger King” education. Have it YOUR way! If a parent yells loudly and threateningly enough, he’ll give it to them, even if it means going back on his word. For example, parents were given a cut-off date to decide whether they wanted to return their child to the physical school building or whether they wanted to stay learning remotely. After this time, he warned, no one would be allowed to change…NO EXCEPTIONS! Except, after months of working with my current roster of students establishing routines and procedures and behavior expectations and truly cultivating a cooperative and caring class, when two of my students’ parents who had chosen remote learning decided they wanted to switch back to my classroom, he countermanded the principal’s decision and told us we had to let them switch. It completely upended the classroom culture the children and I had worked so hard to create.
This man didn’t listen to his teachers when they begged him and presented logical, well-articulated reasons why it was too soon to return to the classroom. The same jerk who, in a video speech sent out to the district, said with a nonchalant shrug of his shoulders, “Can I tell you that none of [the teachers] will get COVID? No.” His indifference gave me cold chills when I witnessed it. He put all of our lives at greater risk needlessly.
So now, here he is, sending me a canned message about how much he appreciates me just because it’s Teacher Appreciation Week. My husband asks if I want to hear the call. Heavens NO! I can’t even stand the sound of the superintendent’s voice anymore. He’s already said enough to me this year, and he said it with every decision he made. He told me loudly and clearly that neither I nor any of my colleagues mean a thing to him. Contrary to his words, he does not value us. Actions speak far louder than words, Mr. Superintendent, so I’m not listening to your words anymore.