Down the Rabbit Hole: Traversing the World of a Sick Administration
In one of my education courses, we read the book Urban Teaching by Lois Weiner. It was mildly interesting and informative, but it wasn’t terribly great. There is one phrase from the book that I do remember and cling too, though.
She discussed the broken and twisted nature of the administration in most urban districts. The term she used was “sick.” In the metaphor, the administration (and the school as a whole) is like an organism - a leviathan if you will. When it does not function properly, it is sick, malformed, and dysfunctional. This dysfunction, of course, has deleterious effects on the operation of the school as a hole.
Why do I bring this up? Because the administration in my school is hopelessly dysfunctional. It is unbelievably sick.
I already posted a story about the enjoyable first few days of school and my scheduling woes.
Here’s another example of odd and counter-productive policies. The administration has a no tolerance policy on tardiness. Once the “late bell” rings, doors are secured (locked so that they can only be opened from the inside), and any students in the halls are supposed to be escorted to the discipline office for suspension.
This is all well intentioned. However, if they insist on enforcing the policy they should do so at the first bell. As it is, class begins when the bell rings. A minute later, an announcement generally comes across “Students should be moving to yada yada period… bla bla bla.” It inevitably disrupts my class. Then a few kids stroll in, because they know that they aren’t really “late.” Finally, the bell rings and two minutes have been wasted.
Computer use in the school is even more poorly managed. There are laptop carts, containing up to 16 laptops (some are of course missing or broken). In a normal school, these would be centrally warehoused and teachers would sign up to use them for the day or certain periods. Instead, they have been claimed by enterprising teachers. If you want to use them, you need to work around their schedule. If they’re busy, good luck finding another cart.
There are also rooms full of computers. These are apparently only for special classes that use computers. Even though they are empty several periods of the day, they cannot be used as computer labs. I didn’t know this originally, so I asked my supervisor whether or not there were computer labs for use and how I should sign up for one. His response was, “If that is possible, I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
Which brings me to the final gripe for the day - the useless combination of my supervisor and the assistant principal in charge of scheduling.
In the midst of all of my scheduling problems, I tried to approach the assistant principal to get them fixed. He sent me to my supervisor. I gave him all of my concerns, and he didn’t do much. At one point, I asked the assistant principal’s secretary if she had an updated schedule for me. She said to talk to my supervisor - but the only “schedule” he had was the one he asked me to write for him!
Today, I was trying to get some students transferred into my honors class. There is currently one student in the section, so it would be nice to have a few more. I first went to guidance, since they handle most student scheduling changes. They sent me to the assistant principal’s office. His secretary sent me to the supervisor.
His response was that he had no jurisdiction to authorize student schedule changes, so he wasn’t going to do anything. Yup. Very useful.
It’s frustrating to deal with the combination of these two individuals because no amount of logic will ever prevail. I am trying to do something that is clearly in the interest of the students, but bureacratic bullshit gets in the way. At these times, I really feel like I’ve gone down the rabbit hole and that the logic of the real world just doesn’t exist anymore.
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