FRUSTRATION.

It's really hard to figure out how to write about this. There is an exhaustive amount of details that may or may not make sense. I'm really emotional about it.* I don't want to sound like a whiner. Oh, well. Here goes.
This woman, my IST, is someone I've talked about before. She was a social studies teacher last year and this is her first year out of the classroom. We'll call her Ms. Sperry. Ms. Sperry loves for things to be "easy." If someone else did her lesson planning, she would be in heaven. She likes being given direction. She likes impressing people.
Ms. Vinson, on the other hand, has her own direction and could give a shit about impressing people.
Last year, Ms. Sperry was upstairs (with the crazies). The kids were really good for her. And as far as I know, nobody really "hated" her. I would hear the kids grumble, but kids grumble about teachers all the time. Anyway, amist all the craziness up there, she never ever left her room. If there was a fight 2 feet from her door, oh well. I'm not trying to really put any judgement in that statement, just that's how she was. Okay, I'm judging. She's not a team player. She didn't ever try to help the teachers who were having problems. She is the queen of, "Well, I don't know what to tell you. I don't have problems from them." Okay, so the kids learned absolutely nothing all year. It wasn't "her job" to help those teachers.
Well, now it is. But she doesn't have the teachers whose rooms look like insanity. She has me. And 3 other teachers. Those teachers definitely have classroom management issues (nothing huge) but they are all in their 2nd year of teaching. Last year for them was horrrible, so I'm guessing they are thrilled with any guidance. Or maybe they can just take it better than me.
Anyway, since I've talked to basically everyone about this, several people have said that they think she is jealous of my situation. She wants to teach the advanced kids and work with the teachers who can do their job effectively. (Which makes sense.) So, instead of coming into my room and finding the positive, she is instead looking at how she would do it differently. Which would be fine if she didn't phrase this in ways that make it seem like I have to do everything she says.
What really brought all this to the breaking point was her weekly meeting. I'm supposed to meet with her every Wednesday at 9:30a.m. I forgot twice. Now, I'm sure there is something subconscious about this but I really did forget. She wrote a memo saying I REFUSE (she wrote it like that..like we fought about it or something) to attend meetings. So, because of this, I had to have a meeting with her and one of the asst. principals.
At this meeting, I told them I feel like I'm being attacked. She comes to my room everyday and writes in her notebook for 20 minutes and never tells me what this says. She picks little insignificant things and totally blows them out of proportion. She "suggests" things, but then asks me about implementing her suggestions everyday. (While she is "suggesting," she talks to me like I'm four years old and have stolen cookies.) She asks for something to be done and expects it to be changed immediately. If I tell her she is stressing me out, she says, "No, I'm not." Her positive comments all have to do with my room (it's "pretty"). Or they are so condescending I don't even count them as compliments. (Ex. when she looked at my lesson plan for the first time, she said, "beautiful" like 9 times because she thought I had followed her directions. But if she had looked at any of my previous lesson plans, she would know I changed nothing.)
Her issues with me:
1. I make my kids learn the states. It is not in the curriculum and has nothing to do with what I'm teaching. Their homework every night is to study their states. Every Friday they have to know 10 more and I don't care which 10. This is an EXTREMELY HUGE PROBLEM. Obviously. Because the homework is vague, because I do not give them strategies to learn the states. Because after we had gotten to 30, she gave me some worksheets on making them learn them by region and I did not use them. (Hey kids, remember how I said any 10? Just Kidding! hahahahaha.)
2. Working in groups is not "cooperative learning." You know the strategy, one person is the time keeper, one person is the manager, whatever. Well, one person is supposed to be "the recorder" who turns in all the work. When my kids work in groups, EVERYBODY has to turn in the work. Another EXTREMELY HUGE PROBLEM. In her memo, I "refuse to incorporate cooperative learning" in my classroom.
3. One day, on a shortened schedule, my "warm-up" was "Go to the bookshelf and get your textbook. Turn to pg. 16." Then we were going to start the assignment immediately because I only had 40 minutes. Serious Issue. This warm-up did not align with my curriculum!!!!! Let me repeat that this was one day and one warm-up (I have 3 a day.)
4. I don't write every single thing I'm going to say in my lesson plan. (this is the part about me giving a shit about impressing people and that being her only mission in life)

The asst. principal, who I really like but I also know has her own issues, totally did not listen to anything. She instead decided to make all those ridiculous statements in my previous post. She focused on the fact that I am "sensitive" and Ms. Sperry needs to understand that when talking to me.
She then went on that whole tangent about me not following the curriculum (because I make up my own activities) which no one had ever,ever told me until that meeting. Apparently, the "suggested" activities are not suggested at all. (Somebody really needs to get these people a dictionary.) I don't understand why I get in trouble for teaching the exact same thing in my own way. Who cares? (Oh, "they" do.)
She also was all up in my business because I'm going faster/slower than I'm supposed to. If the curriculum "suggests" I spend 1 week on "Colonial Life" then by God, I will be spending one week teaching colonial life. (But! I only teach them for 18 weeks and the curriculum is set up for 36 weeks!.....So?.....So I won't get to even half of it!......So?.....)
All of this was news to me (Hey! Isn't this your 4th year teaching this exact curriculum? Why yes! It is!) So I spent the 2nd half of the meeting with one of those "What...the...hell..." looks on my face.
What we learned by the end of this meeting is:
I have not been following rules I was not aware existed.
I now must follow these rules, even though I still don't know what most of them are.
Ms. Sperry is no longer allowed to talk to my students when she is in my room, or call me out while I'm teaching. (victory!)
I'm sensitive.
Kids learning things and enjoying social studies is not important.
Me coming up with my own ideas is unacceptable.

I am unhappy with the outcome of this meeting. I've emailed the Director of Social Studies to make sure what they said is the truth. Seriously, I can.not. believe. we have to follow that curriculum to the letter. If it is true, then peace out Baltimore! If its not, we'll see what their reaction to me being right and them being wrong is before we proceed.
whew. if anybody is still with me after all that, congratulations! hope it wasn't too exhausting to read.

*see next post.