Oy vay. Enough with the master teacher drama already.

WARNING: This is an extra long post! My supervisor wanted a detailed description of what happened this week, and here it is, minus the names.

Friday morning, my master teacher and I had our regularly scheduled meeting. She had the same expectation as always, that I have a detailed lesson plan for each day for the week ahead. I brought the problem on myself by not having that for her. I had a plan for 3 days ahead.

When I gave her the plans, I asked her if we could switch our meetings so that we met for half the time on Friday to discuss the first part of the week and then again for half a period on Monday to discuss the second part of the week. This would allow me to incorporate her changes from the beginning of the week as I plan for the rest of the week, as well as for me to have the weekend to do more planning. (She had actually mentioned last semester when we were discussing having our regular meetings that it might be better for us to meet on Mondays to give me the weekend to do planning, but then we decided that it wouldn’t be enough notice to make changes to the week’s plan if we met the day of the first lesson.)

I felt like that was a very fair request. Am I wrong? Well, at that point, my master teacher freaked out. She said that if I were her student that I would have a D right now since I’d given her just 60% of what she’d asked for. I explained that it was hard for me to plan 5 and 6 days ahead since we are starting a new book (To Kill a Mockingbird) and I haven’t had much opportunity to assess their comprehension of longer texts. (We’ve been doing mythology these past weeks, so we’ve been doing a lot of short myths, which is different than asking students to read 20 or so pages per night, especially for English language learners.) I also told her that I wanted to reread the book (I reread half of it this weekend) but that I hadn’t had time to do that this week. She told me that teaching 5 classes is way more work, and that she doesn’t know what SFSU is having me do that’s taking up so much time that I haven’t had time to do all this. I felt like I needed to defend myself, as it was a very antagonistic conversation, and I know that I have been putting in a tremendous amount of work each day. At the same time, I was committed to behaving professionally and courteously. I hate behaving professionally and courteously.

She said that in the past she’s asked me for things and I haven’t had them for her (although I have for the past 2 weeks), and that in the past the only “consequence” for me not having it was “an unpleasant conversation” but that now there would be a real consequence. She was going to give me the week off.

The conversation took a different turn when she then said “Given our history, I’d think you’d just have what I’m asking you to have,” and I actually thanked her for bringing that up, as that had been in our space for months now but I had never really addressed it with her directly. I told her that our history (her speaking to me in a very confrontational, punitive, and unprofessional manner that made me feel very uncomfortable, and her doing so on several occasions) actually made it much harder for me to produce what she wants. Whereas I enjoy preparing for and teaching the other class—although I don’t have the level of prep done for that class that she wants either—I dread her class, and I feel so much pressure to produce plans that will please her that I find myself feeling uncomfortable and stressed just thinking about the class (not to mention teaching it). I told her I’ve never in my life been spoken to the way she has spoken to me—even as a kid if I did something wrong, my parents never would have spoken to me the way she does. I had tears in my eyes at various points. Ugh. That is so not a presence I want in my life.

She told me that if I want to talk to my supervisor or try to get placed with someone else that I should go and do that, seemingly daring me to do so. I told her very politely that she could give me the week off or try to get rid of me if she wanted but that I’m not a quitter and that I had no intention of giving up on that class. (Sounds like an after-school special: "I'm not a quitter!")

She also kind of threw in my face a criticism of my lesson plans for last week, arguing that they were vague. I was shocked by this since she did not give me this criticism last week when we discussed them. In fact, I felt I did a really good job with those lessons. Last week the students did presentations on creation myths they each researched, which took up Tues, Wed, and Thurs (no class Mon bc of the holiday), and we’d have a review and quiz on Fri. My dilemma with those lessons was that the presentations were to take 3-5 minutes each plus a minute each of possible question time, and there were 5-6 students each day, so there was some uncertainty about how much time there would be each day after the presentations. (3 minutes x 5 = 15 minutes vs. 6 minutes x 6 = 36 minutes; classes at our school are an outrageously short 40 minutes.) So, in prepping for each day and the week ahead, I developed objectives and several possible activities to do in the remaining time. I wrote objectives for the rest of class each day and plans for if there were at least 15 minutes left and had a couple of short things planned for if there was less time so we could use that time wisely. I also had homework contingencies if we didn’t get to things in class. This level of planning was helpful, but most of it went out the window since almost all of the presentations took the entire 5 minutes plus questions, and that took the entire class. Anyway, I felt very prepared for last week, and I felt like it went really well. Meanwhile, this Friday my master teacher criticized these plans for my not having things better planned out. Ugh. I defended myself on this and pointed out on those lesson plans the examples of the objectives and plans for each day, at which point she relented. It seemed like she'd just been trying to gather evidence about me and skewed the facts in her mind to prove her story right.

She said something about having the impression I didn’t even have a skeletal plan for the week, and I argued this point. I told her that I had planned the first three days and that I had a lot of ideas for the book, but that I hadn’t plugged each of them in to a particular day or worked out exactly how they would go. I gave her some examples of my ideas, and I think this may have given her more confidence that I had given this some thought. I told her that I felt a lot of pressure to have things set in stone because she yelled at me when I gave her my plan a couple weeks ago when I had Mon-Wed planned but had three possibilities for Thurs and Fri that I needed to decide between. She said this made her feel I was unprepared.

When the conversation began (we were in the English department office), the room was empty as far as I recall. During the course of the conversation, though, people came in and out. I’m not sure who heard what (I was obviously very focused on our conversation), but I know several teachers and the dept head were in at various points (though they may not have heard the more heated parts of the conversation—I just don’t know). One teacher who I hardly know called me aside on Monday to tell me that she overheard part of the conversation and that she was appalled at the tone of the conversation. She said she almost interrupted but that she doesn’t really know my master teacher (who has only been at this school for 2 years) and decided it wasn’t really her place to do so. She said that I shouldn’t allow her to get to me and that when she was a student teacher and that when she’s had student teachers that it was the master teacher’s job to be supportive, and that she was sorry that that is obviously not my experience. Finally, she said she was going to talk to the department head about it. I don’t know if she did, but the department head approached me today for the first time to check in with me about how things are going. She said that she had a sense that something was wrong based on an intuition and seeing the look on my face a couple of times. My nice master teacher also reported that she could sense that something was not right when I walked into her classroom to teach a few minutes after that "I'd have a D" conversation. When she and I debriefed class that day (which I was shocked went well) she asked me about the meeting and was shocked by what was said. She said she would talk to her.

I don’t know if she did talk to her, but the way my master teacher and I left it that morning was that we would meet again later in the day during a free mod. When we met at that point, it was a completely different conversation. She sort of apologized—not saying sorry for her behavior but for the impact of it (sorry that I got upset)—and spent a good hour with me, giving me some great suggestions for structuring the unit. Finally, some help!! That conversation went great. During that time I also gave her a typed list of activities I had referred to earlier and typed up during my prep. I’ll attach that too. She told me she had changed her mind about the week off. She also gave me a sample of what she called an “acceptable” plan—I guess acceptable meaning that she wouldn’t bite my head off if I gave her a plan at that level. That plan included a goal for the week and a rough layout of the plans for each day, rather than a breakdown of the whole class. That feels much more doable for me!

This weekend I reread half the book and did a bunch of planning, but my priority was not planning out exactly the plan for Thursday and Friday but developing a more general plan for the next 2 weeks, based in good part on the suggestions she gave me. When I got to school on Monday, she was in the English dept office, where she hardly ever is, and asked to see my plans for next week. This was about half an hour before my other class, and I really did not want to have another conversation with her about this, esp before teaching. I also knew I did not have my plan structured out in the way she wanted it (minute by minute), but I gave her a handwritten calendar of the next two weeks and went over it with her, and she gave me helpful feedback on it. I had the sense that she wasn’t happy I didn’t have my full 5 days spelled out for her—I could just sense her getting tense and frustrated, though it may have been my imagination—but she didn’t give me a hard time.

The interesting thing is that I actually agree with her that I should be more prepared, and I would like to be, but that is not as easy for me as she makes it seem. I come home at 8:00 from SFSU 3 nights a week and do grading (I give writing assignments almost every night for HW in my 10th grade class—which I have stopped doing this week to give me more time!) and prepping for the next day (rereading the chapter assigned for HW that night as well as the next day’s). Thursday night I am preparing for my meeting with her—actually, I admit I spend some time procrastinating that because I dread it so much—and over the weekend I do more grading, more reading of the books, and reworking or planning additional lessons with the occasional social activity interspersed in. It’s not like I’m off partying every night or something! I wish! I’m working really hard but feel the stress of working with her, which I know is having an impact on my teaching that class. The stress of her observing me each day in the beginning of the semester, and my feeling nervous with her doing so, really affected my performance in the classroom. There were a lot of little things that didn’t go well bc of my nervousness (as well as my being new) that, I think, led the students to doubt my level of professionalism, esp given that she was in the room each day taking notes. While there have been little things that didn’t go well in my 10th grade class, I never have felt like that has affected my students’ confidence in me, my own confidence in myself, or in the overall feel of the class, which I feel has been going really great. On the other hand, I do feel like that has had a huge impact in my 9th grade class.

I’m not sure where I even want to go from here. Part of me would love to just not work with that teacher anymore. Well, actually, all of me would love that! But I don’t feel good about switching classes in the middle of the semester. How would that even work? And maybe it’s just a matter of me doing more planning ahead, at which point my master teacher wouldn’t even be an issue anymore?

The whole thing with my master teacher has taken up way too much of my time and energy that I should be putting into getting better prepared as well as to recharging my own batteries—getting enough rest, having some non-work time, etc., which is very frustrating. I'm committed to focusing on my class, though, and having the confidence and mind control to not allow myself to get sidetracked by her anymore.

Hence, off to do prep! This is a thorough update, though, for the scrapbook. How ridiculous this will all seem soon enough....