Three Rants and a Positive

Goal of the week: posting my lesson plans to the new blog. So far it's been extremely helpful to me. I don't have to remember to track down 5 different people in email to get them what I need to get them. I do have to remember to get everything for everyone in one template, so that should be a little hairy. I'm hoping that I can get them so that they're done WEEKS in advance. That would be my definition of teacher heaven. Even though they change from day to day anyway.

So, in light of the fact that I've been encouraged to rant more this entry is going to be 90% rant.

Rant #1 - The back of my room is a storage room (I teach science and it's supposed to be storage for the chemicals). Instead, it's been turned into an office for floating teachers. This includes 4 older men. They crack jokes about women drivers, eat my students' candy, and call me "the queen." They also walk in and out of my room while I'm teaching and use the phone in my room while I'm teaching. That's frustrating.

Rant #2 - Only people outside of school take my work as professional. When I'm at the bank, talking to people in the doctor's office, or out anywhere other than at school, if people find out I'm a teacher then they view my line of work with respect. In the building, however, the staff seem to not view the work with respect and it bothers me. I like my work. I think of my job as a professional one. The attitude of the building is leaking into the students, who don't really see the teachers as professionals. That's frustrating.

Rant #3 - I've had to deal with my first case of people being too casual in the workplace. This never happened to me as a scientist. This relates to Rant #2. When I was working in Research (TM), everyone was very proper, no one over-shared, and everyone was very polite. There was possibly the occasional swearing when things did not go well. I've never had to deal with colleagues telling me about their past drug addictions casually, or their low sperm-count in the elevator, or male coworkers trying to rub my shoulders (uninvited because I'm not a fan of people in my personal space) to get me "calm down," or cuss and scream about the administration at a professional meeting. I've never had people refuse to do what the boss told us to do at a meeting and then loudly exclaim that it was "just stupid" and sulk, either. My grandmother would wash my mouth out with soap if she even thought I was behaving like no matter how old I am. This is all very frustrating. I've also never had co-workers walk in and interrupt me while I was working without asking permission or even apologizing for the interruption. I don't understand where everyone's manners are. It gets me every time.

All of this ends on a positive note. I realized the other day while I was getting interrupted that I've come a long way as a teacher. I knew within 2 minutes that the class was getting slightly out of wack and how to get them back on task. I have to stop and smile at that one.