I have a boss, right now, an assistant principal, that I don't respect. I think she reasons selectively to reinforce her own biases. She's panned a couple of evaluations for me, both of which I thought were bullshit and unfair. Ironically, she is a former special education teacher, which is crazy for me to fathom because all of her interactions with me are completely in violation of the spirit of one of the more important principles of special education: a strengths perspective.
This assistant, I don't think, has had one thing good to say about me. One thing. Kind of amazing, really, since the strengths perspective I learned in grad school involved finding as many strengths in people as possible as a fundamental element of mental health. And what's even more amazing is that most people think I'm pretty smart and nice and decent and a good guy. This vice principal doesn't acknowledge any of these things or anything else that might challenge her self-righteous notion that I might do a good job with kids and that the way she looks at dealing with kids may have problems with it. She thinks schools are about rules and legalisms, and I think schools are about people and learning. And I have no respect for people who orient themselves around other people in this way, is the truth. Because it's not what people are about, down deep.
And that is the problem with power.
I have grown up my entire life listening to teachers complain about working with vice principals just like this one. Administrators who are so full of their own arrogant notions of the world that they can't even engage a difference, honestly, for fear of losing control of people. By definition, in my book, as I grew up, this is what a poor teacher looked like. A poor teacher is someone who thinks that by virtue of knowing something that they know everything they need to know. And no engagement with others is necessary to correct any notion they might have, because they carry all the correct notions they might need in their little private rulebooks of life.
I have grown to despise then pity petty authority figures like this one, who look, primarily, after their own hind ends and who have lost all perspective on the value of education, altogether, except as a means of employment. I listened to this administrator condescendingly tell a student that she had chosen a "realistic" goal when she chose to be a massage therapist. It never occurred to her that she may just want to be a massage therapist, and that it may have nothing to do it all with being "realistic" (with the implication being that she couldn't do anything else).
I have butted heads my entire life with people who have authority over me but who are not as smart as me. And this is no exception.
It's very possible that my principals want me to quit. And there's not much to stop me from doing that, at this point.
All I can say is that I thank goodness that I did not listen to people like this assistant when I was in school. That's exactly what I would tell my child. But it would be tough to watch them go through the hurt that I'm going through even when you know the person giving the feedback is completely full of shit.
I don't know what I will do, at this point. But giving two shits about what this assistant principal says or thinks, at this point, is not on my agenda.
Love,
Ben
