Fingers crossed. It’s a public charter. In some ways, more progressive than public schools, but they also seem to fuck it up in their own unique ways. The expectations of teachers are well beyond the district’s expectations. Absurd expectations. I know it’s well known the position that teachers are put in – but I cannot stress enough how insanely idealistic this charter network is. They’ve gone viral on this sub before, resulting in another school’s 2 week soft lock down and clogged phone lines.
Very gaslighting. I’m relatively young, have educational experience prior to this, but it’s the highest paying job I’ve had in education, so I’ve given into some (not all) gaslighting for a long time. The start of this new school year, I opened up some of my concerns to more experienced teachers, who all seemed to agree.
Other actions of my principal which I won’t go into detail about are… pretty big red flags. Just got real bad recently, and seem to be directed towards me more than others (something I didn’t think until other teachers told me so). It seems she has some negative feelings towards me, despite everyone else being supportive. It’s gone so far as not getting a reimbursement for classroom set up a month after the fact, when everyone else has been approved for reimbursement. I went shopping with some of them, and submitted my reimbursements at the same time.
I just don’t get what’s going on. I don’t get how she can be so idealistic about curriculum and about teacher expectations. I don’t get how the network can be so idealistic. How they can cite TLAC while cherry-picking, and blaming failures on teachers when TLAC makes it clear that network idealism explains all of the problems with their design. I don’t get how everyone is working until 1am and not standing up for themselves. Or how I’m being compared to teachers who work 70 hours a week, when we’re contracted for 50. If I don’t get as much done as those who work all night, I somehow have a time management problem.
My class is tight. Behavior, lessons, test scores, loving culture…. It’s on point. Yet I’m somehow fucking up for not getting the paperwork in.
So I sent a long message. Not aggressive, more of “here’s some serious problems I’m seeing, which seem to relate to leadership. Please show me in detail how you would manage these expectations.”
Paraphrasing of course. Let’s see how this goes.