The Culture of Low Expectations

For the first time in my career as a teacher, I was informed of my new classroom #, the grade I was teaching and my classes BEFORE the day before school started. In fact, the lady who was our principal for a grand total of one month was so organized, she had it together before the end of the 2010-2011 school year.
I was told I'm teaching 7th grade. I'm ambivalent about that. It's the same kids which is good, but 7th graders are the devil and the curriculum is all wonky. Basically they want you to teach everything, ever. They aren't really into "history" so much as social studies concepts and skills. It's all over the place.
I've taught this grade before and I wanted a little more structure.So, I decided that I wanted to take 4 short fiction novels about children in different countries. (If you are dying to know: The Breadwinner-Afghanistan, Before We Were Free-Dominican Republic, Long Walk to Water-Sudan, and The Year of Impossible Goodbyes-Korea.) Basically, I would take these books as a supplement and study each country's culture, government etc.
I go to speak to the Director of Literacy about my idea. (She works for our Operator, the people who took over.) She informed me (and I have a witness) that, "Miss Vinson, we learned from last year that these kids don't really LIKE reading, so I don't think it's fair to have TWO classes, in addition to Language Arts, in which their grade is based on reading." Wellllllllllllllll.
I was in shock, so I had a hard time finding my argument. But I started by telling her that we wouldn't read the book like they do in Language Arts (no similes or metaphors, just culture) and that it would just be a supplement to the curriculum. She continued to insist that it was a bad idea. She eventually relented by saying that I could do the first book, but we would wait on the rest.

Things I wish I had said:
1. WHAT DO YOU THINK WE DO NOW? Look at pictures all day? No! We READ!
2. Because they don't WANT to??!! ARE YOU SERIOUS?
3. THIS. IS. SCHOOL.

The other teacher that heard this little exchange had some more input. She had been a first year Language Arts teacher. She said that it was pretty insulting of this lady to assume that kids didn't want to read EVER because of the mess that was her classroom.

These are the people that are supposed to be making us BETTER.