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Evidently I have an assistant principal that doesn't like paraprofessionals. She feels we shouldn't have any breaks, but be at her beck and call every second of the 8 hour day. She actually had the nerve to say we couldn't take a short bathroom break after one meeting we had this week (we are in inservice classes before school starts this Monday) when we were going BACK into another meeting in about 5 minutes. In fact, I had to go to the head principal so we could attend the mandatory meeting that came next. She wanted us to do piddly little jobs, like taking paper off of bulletin boards.
I got there one morning, before her, and told the secretary that, if they didn't have anything for me to do at that moment I was going to go help my husband (one of the teachers) get his room ready. I gave her my phone number to call my cell if she needed me. About an hour later all paras were called to the office and she dressed us down saying, "on days like this you need to report to the office to find out what to do for the day", while staring at me. I politely said I had been in the office and given my number to contact me if they needed me and told them where I was. I felt like a 5 year old being dressed down. She snapped at me that the secretary wasn't in charge and didn't know what we should do. I explained, still politely, that SHE hadn't been there, so I decided to help out somewhere. That witch went to the principal and said I was rude and insubordinate. He called me in and got my side and just told me we ALL need to watch our tone.
I know he was talking more about her than me, because I asked the others that were there if I was rude and they told me they couldn't believe how professional I was, because they also felt like little kids when she spoke to us. Our principal is new, and the last guy let her run everything her way, and would never ask for both sides of any story, just jump the paras if she complained about them. I can't wait until she gets fired, but I'll be so nice to her until then it will rot her teeth.
I think the reason she is after me is that I stood up to her over copy paper. Yeah, copy paper. We have the new school, that hopefully we'll move into in two weeks, so she wanted us to put out ONE (1) box of paper. For ALL teachers. ONE! And this is the start of school, when tons and tons of papers get run off. And that is just for course outlines and/or supply lists. Some classes have web based lesson plans, and no textbooks. Those classes rely heavily on run off papers, of course.
She argued with me that the teachers should be using the laptops to teach from (my husband doesn't have one in his room) and he shouldn't be running off much at all. I asked her how the kids were supposed to do homework if they didn't have the problems to work. My exact first words to her to start this conversation were "They're using CScope in math and have to run off everything". She took that to mean the teacher instructions, evidently. Guess what, they run off the teacher portion too, because they use Elmo document cameras to project onto their whiteboards, so a laptop screen would be useless.
BTW, the bathroom break she wouldn't let us take at the start of my rant? I took it anyway.
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