THOSE teachers

I just had a teacher moment and to be quite honest, I am disappointed in myself. All my life, I've been passive...too passive I think. I go along with most stuff and I'm not the person to grab the reigns or force decisions. Apparently the last year of my life has changed something inside me because suddenly I am that person. Let me tell you the story.

In school we have these cadres. I am on the Communication Arts cadre and we drive the reading and writing for the school. Pretty much we ask the teacher to collect data and do a ton of work and then we collect the data and never look at it. The purpose of the cadre is to make sure all grade levels are on the same page...doing what they need to be doing and making the work grade appropriate (not too hard but not too easy). We meet once a month and I HATE cadre meetings. We never get anything done. An example? Since January we have been discussing this thing called Reading Circle. Every child needs to meet the requirements and for my state, each child needs to read 11 fiction and 5 non-fiction. You may be thinking to yourself, "Self, that seems so easy." Really, however, it's not. Think about the book reports you turned in as a child? I don't know about you but I did the least amount of work because I hated them. I thought they were dumb. They didn't teach me anything so I blew them off. Apparently that wasn't just some generational slump. All students are like that...or most I guess. So as a cadre we had to develop a way to ensure that all students were meeting the Reading Circle goal. Blah blah blah. It sounds easy. And it should have been. Instead it has taken 4 months...FOUR months to figure this out. Every meeting I leave wanting to poke my eye out because every meeting the requirements get harder and harder.

Fast forward to today. The meeting had been going on for about 1 hour. I was getting so frustrated that I started gazing out the window. The principal, who was sitting next to me says, "What do you think?" Without thinking before speaking I said, "Okay. This is what I think. And I went on to tell everyone why my idea was best. And they bought it. I think mostly they bought it because my face turned red...partly from embarrassment and also partly because I was frustrated. And that was the end of it. Someone said "All in favor." We were decided. And at that moment I realized that I had given it very little thought. I didn't consider how other people in the school would react to the change my requirements would bring about. And I realized...at that exact moment...that I am becoming one of THOSE teachers.

Most of the teacher here are THOSE teachers. When I look at their husbands and their lives, I cringe because I so don't want to become that. They are so opinionated and so...strict...I guess even with their regular families. They are the "this is my way and walk ye in it" type people. My passive nature made me almost the antithesis of THOSE and now...now that seems to be changing. I don't want to be in a marriage where I treat my husband like a student or my children like subjects. And the devastating realization is that even through that one moment, I am more like THOSE teachers than I ever thought I would be.