My wife has been having trouble at the schools she teaches at. Used to teach at.
Her principal was a terror. Her method of management is ridicule, deception and blame. There is too much to tell here. Let it suffice to say that if half of your staff has filed grievences against you to the school board, then you are a bad, bad person.
After the grievences were filed, the principal became bent on revenge against anyone who was involved. with the end result being that my wife's school became a very shitty place to work for a number of people.
So, this summer most of the filers started requesting transfers and otherwise seeking work elsewhere. My wife included.
Luckily my wife landed a gig this week teaching 5th grade at a nice school with a good principal. And a few others found work as well. But my wife was happy and sad. She would be working in a better environment, but she'd be leaving her friends and back in the classroom after spending the last 7(?) years being the best elementary music teacher in her district. But for the most part she felt great about the move.
Until last night.
She got a few calls from her peeps last night saying that the evil witch of a principal was getting transfered to a different school. Just rumour at this point, but it hit her in a bad way.
If the rumour was true, she'd made her move too soon. If the rumour was true, she hadn't had to leave after all.
At this point she settled in to a bit of second guessing. But the deal is done. She's gone.
And with this came guilt. Had she let her students down as well?
Mary is an emotional one. She lives by her heart, and I love her for it. But for her sake I wish she'd just waited. Now she has to deal with a major change in her life because of making a choice 2 days early. Sometimes it's better to wait. Just a little while to see how things develop.
Of course it's easy for me to say wait; I never had to work with her principal. And I'm not Mary. I like a good fight. I have no problem tilting at windmills.
I hope I can give Mary the strength to get through this. It's another in recent trials that the fam has gone through.
I just want her to be happy.
2 comments:
Second-guessing is a loser's game. It's not that losers are the ones who do it, but that it will make you feel like one if you let yourself do it. Tell her she did the right thing and make her believe it, because the choice when she made it was to either get out of a bad situation or get stuck in it for at least another year, and I think she made the right one.
The trick with decisions like this--most of life's major decisions, I daresay--is that there will always be something that can make you look back and wonder if you made the right choice. Spending time on the "what ifs" of those choices will at the minimum make your self-confidence take a hit and at worst make you sick worrying about it. Believe me, I'm talking from personal experience here. What's done is done, she made a fine decision in her circumstances, and she's got a whole new set of opportunities ahead of her.
Focus on the positives of it now, because there isn't any going back.
-thin
I told Mary the same thing.
But as is turns out all of her friends had bad info and they're stuck with the witch for another year.
So I guess things worked out in the end. I guess.
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