To say today was an interesting day is a HUGE A MONGUS understatement.
As usual I woke up and ate breakfast, key lime pie yogurt (not that great, have to remember that and not buy it again) from Kroger and a banana. I know I’ve eaten a lot of bananas this week, but we bought a huge bunch and I don’t think Aaron’s eaten a single one! I guest the warmth here in TN has made them ripen quicker than usual. However I did see a post this week about these stay fresh bags and if I can get the net to connect to this weekend I’ll try to find the bags and buy some (if they are affordable) and compare myself.
I rushed through breakfast and getting ready so I could make my lunch. I didn’t do it last night b/c I just plum didn’t feel like it since I got home after seven due to the training class (which btw counts towards my needed 30 hours at work and I need 9.5 by the end of June, now I only need 6.5!).
I only got to work a couple of minutes early. As I was parking I saw some lady pruning the bushes at the top of our parking lot. Normally this wouldn’t give me any concern, but we’ve had two cars broken into in the last five months or so and usually landscaping people work in groups and are stereotypically Mexicans. Not to mention I seriously doubt that FS is going to pay for an outside person to do landscaping. We usually only use volunteers. Our DR and AD weren’t here yet so I told the DR and AD of outreach and they went up and asked what was going on. Luckily it was a family member of an important well to do person of the senior hill center that was volunteering their time.
The first part of the morning, literally like the first hour or so, went smoothly. I did the regular routine paper filing and printing and placing it all in the right place. Then I checked my child specific notebook and tried to figure out how many hours I’ve done so I can know how many more I need b/4 the end of June. If I did it correctly, I don’t think I’m going to need too many if any at all.
Then I saw the new schedule and stopped to talk to the AD director about it (there was an error on it in relation to the shift I work). Jumping ahead of boring stuff now --- I’ve got a new schedule to work after 2:45: I used to go play with the big kids on Mondays and Thursdays, but now I play with the babies every day (mon – thur) except for about half an hour on Thursday. I’ve also had an hour of my paperwork time cut out which really irked me, a lot, I can’t even express the feeling I have physically at how aggravated this makes me. When it was first pointed out I mentioned it and the AD said that I can’t compare hours I get to hours other teachers get, but I will (especially as soon as I get a chance to sit down and figure it out again and you know it’s going to be posted here!). Also during this conversation with the AD I explained to her how much my CT and I have to do compared to the rest of the teachers and that’s why it kind of takes us a bit longer.
Now calmer story – I was in need of typing a new UW goal sheet for the kid that transfers out of our class into the full time center and my data sheet didn’t match the data sheet of another kid in her classroom. So I had to slow my progress and find the correct sheet b/c I don’t want to be in error and give another teacher the wrong document, which would be very un lead teacher of me! This slowed me down tremendously b/c I had to ask the HR lady who plays favorites with the Executive Directors kid. The HR lady was helping said kid transition from one activity to another and instead of just transitioning them she hung out in there. It was actually kind of awkward b/c I just stood there and waited for several minutes. I couldn’t really leave b/c I couldn’t do anything else at that point (all I needed to do was this goal sheet and the assessment and I didn’t want to start the assessment and have to pause to do the sheet and I didn’t want her to forget to give me the sheet b/c the sheet is way more important for the new teacher to have than the assessment). After finishing the goal sheet the AD confronted me and laid out all our dirty laundry so to speak.
The conversation took almost an hour, had to! Basically it boils down to she didn’t like that I confronted her about the new schedule change in front of my CT b/c she could tell there was obvious tension. She respects me, my abilities, my knowledge, and love for children and wishes I would do the same for her. I told her that I felt like every time she came to me/us to ask about things I felt like she was attacking me with her persona and I get defensive b/c that’s my personality. She was stunned. She said she would work on it and I agreed and apologized in advance for snapping in the future b/c sometimes the outside stressors affect the attitude at hand. At some point she asked if she should send me emails instead of coming to me directly and I told her I disliked emails even more b/c the receiver all ways reads it differently than the sender meant for it to sound. She also mentioned something about requesting more time when needed and I informed her that every time I’ve requested I’ve been denied. We also talked about how she thinks I played on the internet during working hours. She said that the time I thought she saw me wasn’t the time that there were other times. I informed here that wasn’t possible b/c I’m mature and professional enough to know better than to lay on the net while on the clock. Anytime I play on the net I’m on my own time. And then she said something about things printing at times of the day when I should be working and I told her that sometimes the printer does quirky things and prints when it wants. Just b/c it’s printing at the moment doesn’t mean that someone literally just printed something, it could have been a back logged file. I also told her how unproductive I am working in the work room and all the actions that happen to slow me down at different times of the day. She had no idea and said she would talk to the DR about allowing me to go back to the back room again especially on Friday’s where I have a large chunk of time. Another thing we talked about was getting that hour cut from my time on Friday’s and how that probably means that from here on out my work is going to be latter than now b/c I’m going to have less time. Then she explained that my CT and I each get three hours a week on our own to work and the rest of the classrooms have to split the three hours between two teachers which means that if they split it evenly (which they hardly ever do) that each of those teachers only get an hour and a half. There was also something in the conversation about it’s her job to question me and make decisions that she sees fits b/c she knows things I don’t know and is not at liberty to tell me when she makes the decision (I wish I could remember what the cursor of this statement was). I think that’s all the important discussions (probably out of order b/c there was so much to take in) and at the end she informed that from here on out we together need to work on having more open lines of communication and the slate is essentially wiped clean b/c she doesn’t hold grudges.
After the forever long conversation I went back to trying to type the DAS on the kid who starts in the new room and came across the same damn problem that supposedly fixed. The document was created by the DR of the Outreach/Spanish program on her computer so it reads all English words as misspelled. This means that when I type everything is underlined in red and when I spell check it the program wants to change all my English words into Spanish words. The only way to fix it is to click the words one or two at time, click language, click English and then it will spell check it. However that would be like checking this entry and turning it around, basically IT WOULD TAKE FOREVER!!!! The reason why this is a big deal is b/c I know when I type and read other documents while doing so words like play always get misspelled (for some strange reason I always type paly). So essentially I’d have to reread very carefully everything I’ve just typed and spell check my own words, which is what people used to do, but have gotten used to the spell check feature. I brought it to the attention of the AD as well as the HR rep and no one knew how to fix it. Need less to say I didn’t complete it and had to head on to the rest of my day.
Which is where I’ll go now. I had lunch, my new salad combo of romaine leaves, carrot sticks, bell peppers, dry roasted edammame, and raspberry balsamic vinegar. Then I head to the baby room. After there I was actually allowed to do more paperwork time during my resource time b/c no one needed me. Thank the computer ‘gods’ considering I’d spent a third of my time talking to people and chasing down documents. Then I went into the toddlers. Nothing exciting really happened during the classroom times, but I did strike a new conversation during the second paper work time with the AT in the Giraffe’s room.
I might be starting my wine club again, highly doubtful, but the above teacher is interested. If she actually follows through it could happen. And I could call Paige and there would at least be three maybe five (the two teachers from the Lions class). It would be nice.
After work I headed to Josh Lyons going away gathering. He sent me the address in an email but didn’t tell me it was an apartment complex or that it was at the pool house. I liked it. There were cape cods and all kinds of Boston
Wow can you tell I had a long day? I’m sure there are minor details I’ve left out, but these are the things I want to remember.
High today: Josh’s going away party, bitter, but sweet.
Thanks for making it through the day and week with me…
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