This is part three of a multi-part post.
Year 3 ended with a mass exodus of teachers as a result of the precipitous decline of student discipline and the removal of teacher authority. Something in Denmark was starting to smell. The rot that started with the hiring of a new principal was now rampant.
For me, Year 4 opened during the summer, standing in the workroom making copies and eavesdropping on office conversations. The one I remember involved the assistant principal, a hold over from the previous principal, and one of her friends. The assistant principal was not a happy camper. She was vociferously complaining about the now not-so-new principal's demands. Regretfully, her door closed before I could hear details.
For everyone, Year 4 saw a push to be accredited. The founder and previous school leaders purposefully eschewed accreditation because it forces a school to conform to a lot of dubious education school theories. And it takes a lot of time away from teaching in order to create useless documents. But the not-so-new principal thought accreditation was important, so we did it, lead by one of his sycophants on the faculty. To make matters worse, this erstwhile leader (who couldn't lead her arse out of a paper bag) was absent in mind and body a good deal of time because she was dealing with a personal matter. Another, highly competent, much more experienced teacher had volunteered to lead, but was turned down on the weakest of excuses - her children attended the school and therefore created a "conflict of interest."
At first I tried to ignore accreditation, but it got me in the end. In a fit of madness, my fellow arts teachers and I decided to develop a strategic plan for our department. Other departments had developed plans of their own which were being included. As the best writer of the group, I took everybody's ideas and over the course of an evening, wrote up a plan. Which I emailed to the principal for review and inclusion with the accreditation documents.
Guess what happened at 7:30 the next morning? An angry principal showed up at my office. As I struggled for consciousness, the principal went on and on about how he could not possibly include my plan as written. Why? I asked. He could not provide a coherent answer, something about building consensus. Other departments are having their plans included verbatim and no consensus was built around them, why can't the art department? Again, no coherent answer, only jive talk about how he supports the arts. My fellow arts teachers were incensed (Both quit within the next 18 months). Our plan ended up on the trash heap.
The other theme of Year 4 was incompetence. Over the summer, offices were supposed to be added to the multi-purpose room. Except the administration wrote the construction contract wrong, so the work actually took place during the first 10 weeks of school. In the room I was teaching in. While I was teaching. Ever try to teach in a construction zone? I don't recommend it.
Because I worked in the multi-purpose room, I was booted out every time someone else wanted to use the room. Because I'm a music teacher, I have 200+ pounds of teaching materials. Guess who is responsible for moving the gear every time I was evicted? Yeah, that's right. By Year 4, I was wracking up injuries at an alarming pace. One of my arches fell requiring 8 months of wearing shoe inserts. I bought a back brace and began using it when I knew I had to move gear. The worst was a torn quad muscle which took 2 years to heal, and required me to sleep on my couch for 6 months. Yes, I reported all of these incidents in person and in writing. Never did the principal offer so much as an apology, let alone relief from the hell I was experiencing. He also never apologized to the art teacher, who was given so many extra duties she nearly had a nervous breakdown -- twice! Her doctor's note got her relief only for two weeks when the principal was out of town.
I could go on and on about Year 4. The students and the parents and the sycophants. It was living in a car wreck.
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