2003-08-21 - 9:30 p.m.
i hate my life. i hate my job. i hate my apartment. hate hate hate hate. i had the most awful day. actually, it's been an awful week. i want to curl up and die. or maybe just curl up and eat a lot of chocolate. yeah. chocolate.
yesterday was my first evaluation. it was a surprise visit; just an announcement over the intercom that he was going to be dropping in sometime during the day. so, he droped in at the tail end of my writing lesson. all he saw was me going around to each of my kids who were still working and giving them help. that's it. for 15 minutes. then he left. i talked to another new teacher. he loved her lesson. he gave her a big thumbs up as he left. no thumbs for teachergirl. i went to talk to him after school and he hit me with the news. i suck. he didn't say that exactly, but hey. there's this form that observers use to evaluate teachers. one column has good teaching behaviors and one has bad. you get check marks each time any behavior in either column is exhibited. you wat checks in the good side. lots of checks. i had very few. i had very few checks alltogether, but yay! most were in the good. so he asked me, why do you think that there are so few checks? i said it was probably because i wasn't really talking a lot. the me-talking part of the lesson was over. the they-writing part was ongoing. he seemed annoyed. he informed me that i should "put on a show" when being observed. i need to yank my kids out of what they are doing so that i can impress the observer with what a good teacher i am. huh?
so, today he came in again. unfortunately, this was the day from hell. my alarm clock broke, so i woke up an hour late. swearing and hyperventilating, i dragged on some clothes and flung myself out the door. i couldn't find my keys, but luckily they were still in the door from yesterday. grrr..... i called the school from my car to let them know i might be late, but since we don't reallt have an office staff yet, no one answered. when someone finally did answer, it was ta-daa!!!! the principal!!!! yay!!!! crap.
since he decided NOT to tell my team that i was running late, my kids had been waiting outside my room for five minutes when i got there to unlock the door. all day they were squirlly. my observation was at 9 am. crap.
when i told my team yesterday that i was being observed again, they made a big deal out of what my lesson should be. so i changed it last minute to a lesson my team leader did a couple days ago. i was not comfortable with it. my kids were wacky and calling out and just not being the little angels needed for a good observation. i couldn't bring myself to go in and talk to him today about it. so, i have to go first thing tomorrow. man, i'm not happy. i wanted to cry and 9:05 and still had to teach all day. my mom said "you'll just have to get over that." i'm sure she meant it in a good way.
i really wish i could talk to my old college pal. he called last night and i felt so much better. it's just that whenever i talk to him, i always end up complaining. i'm not calling just to bitch. i'll call my pal in minnesota. we like to have pity parties. i also need to tell her about my crappy date with internet-guy. i spent most of friday night pretending not to be horrified by his complete self-involvement and financial selfishness. here's where we differ:
i do not believe that there is anything in the world intrinsically worth getting paid millions of dollars for. when there are people starving on the street, it seems cruel to have such rampant selfishness.
he disagreed.
i'm not shocked he hasn't called.
