School Policy

Can We Talk?

Yesterday I was invited to sit down with the two guys who headed up the team who went to Barcelona - in October...with the 43 kids...on a bus. Of course I knew what they wanted to talk about. It was an evaluation of how things went and a sort of "how do we go forward" talk. It's been like five months? It began by one of them asking me if I would do it again. Sure. Maybe. Of course I say that now, but at the end of the trip in October, I said, "Never again." I think by the fall I would find a conflict, but for now, I wanted to say, "Sure. I'd probably go." That is an example of how American I am. Sort of like after a disastrous date and they ask, "Do you want to get together again?" And you say, "Sure. Call me."

I talked about how I didn't think the communication was good, that I felt like they were just deciding and telling the rest of the "team" what was going on and that sometimes what I thought was going on was not going on because they changed plans at the last minute. I also talked about "the incident" and how while everyone was running around and going to and from the hospital, I was left at the hotel with the kids, which was fine, but when I decided to go to bed at 3:00 AM so I could get a couple of hours of sleep, I got a snide remark the next day as if I just went to sleep while everyone else was working.

The incident had to do with three of our kids drinking and one of them getting so drunk that he was laying in his bed throwing up and eventually had to be taken to the hospital.

What eventually ended up happening in this meeting was that they gave me feedback and told me that they probably wouldn't be asking me to go along next year. The feedback was that I was a little stand off-ish and that they didn't really think that they kids respected me as an authority figure. And, oh yeah, we realize that you had been teaching for one month before the trip, but we're still taking that into consideration. All in all, it was crappy timing. Why would they ask me to do that right after school began? They said I wasn't self-directive enough. What was I supposed to do? They didn't communicate.

They felt kind of bad and I said, "No. Don't feel bad. I had mixed feelings about it any way and I'm not sure I would want me on my team on a trip to Barcelona. Certainly not the me that went to Barcelona in October."

So I was rejected by some people I was trying to figure out how to let down easily. This has happened to me in dating situations. Sort of sucks, but at the end of the day, I don't have to go to Barcelona next year...not that I'm going to be here any way.

posted by Philip @ 11:28 AM