OK, So I promised myself I wouldn't do this but...

I just have to vent! I know I've whined a lot, and I mean a lot, about my job. And yes, it is that bad, but I'm trying to be happy about it. And I'm just trying to get my work done. BUT, it seems my corporate offices are out to make sure that I don't have anything done by the time school opens. Which, by the way is TUESDAY. Did I mention that, thanks to a mandate from money hungry corporate, I'm still enrolling students?

Any way, that's not the real reason for this blog. The real reason is that some brilliant (and this term is used with excessive amounts of sarcasm) person at corporate (I think it was our CEO, which would explain a lot, really...) decided that today was a mandatory gathering of all our schools in Florida. Which means that A. I had to get up at 4:30 am to be on a bus by 6:00 am (which got lost on the way to our school and didn't show up until 6:30 am) and B. I lost an ENTIRE day of work. That means I couldn't call parents to offer seats to fill my classes. I couldn't enroll students. I couldn't enter in important information in EITHER of my systems (that's right. I enter in THE SAME INFORMATION TWICE. Once for me and once for the district. And yes, there is a software that my district uses which allows me to directly download all my information at once. But no, corporate won't hear of using it, that would be too easy). Which of course translates into me being at work, on Saturday, to do what I could have done today.

But really, I could get over a 12.5 hour day of work, and I could get over losing a day of work, if the meeting had been worth it. Let me back up. Our first guest speaker was worth it. Dr. Harry Wong had some wonderful things to tell the teachers. One small problem. I'm not a teacher. I'm a registrar. I know the first day of school is important, and I will spend it in my office fixing schedules and adding students. But after Dr. Wong, everything went down hill. It was so boring and so pointless that my table decided to build a table decorations sculpture. Our theme was "building our future" so we had a toy truck on our table with some plastic hard hats and toy tools. So we rolled the truck around the table (making the "vroom! vroom!" noise as we moved it) and every one had to add one thing as they got it. I should see if I can get my principal to email me the picture for your viewing pleasure. I have never laughed so much at conference. It was the coolest. But, seriously, I just wasted a day of my life to be bored and play with plastic trucks.

I suppose this day wouldn't have been so terrible to endure or so agonizing if I wasn't already rather upset at my school/company. I found out quite a few things this week that, as my husband is a teacher at my school, affect me personally.

Thing 1: normally all teachers receive $150 from the school to buy decorations and classroom supplies. With this knowledge, my husband, who will be teaching science for the first time (in a lab with no equipment mind you) spent $300 of our personal money to purchase equipment for his science class, thinking that he would be reimbursed. But no. Our new principal got her figures mixed up (which would have been ok, except for what follows...) and told the new teachers that they get $175. Instead of retracting her statement and correcting the figure, she told the returning teachers they will not be reimbursed. So we just spent $150 more than what we were anticipating and Mark still needs items for his classroom and for his science projects. And when Mark talked to the principal and told her that he didn't get reimbursed for anything last year as he started November 1st so could he please get some assistance, even $75, the principal said no. It wasn't in the budget.

Thing 2: Mark spent all summer creating a curriculum that incorporated the book he thought he was going to have in his classroom, only to find that the book he was told he would be using was incorrect. They will be using the books from last year, which are horrible, nonsense books, not to mention that there is no teacher manual and the books haven't actually arrived yet. So he wasted a whole summer.

Thing 3: The new, fresh out of college teachers are making more money than the returning teachers, by a good $2,000. That's right. We had to move ourselves down here in three weeks, pay for it ourselves (mainly with the generous donations of family members, thanks guys!) and get paid less than the district. And, in thanks for all Mark's hard work last year, he got a 2% raise. That's right. He's making $174 more this year, which, when you figure in all that he had to pay for his classroom supplies which we weren't planning on, he will be making $24 more this year. But since he got a $500 bonus at the end of last year, he's really making $476 less this year (for those of you who don't follow my mathematical logic, we take the $174 raise, subtract the $150 we weren't planning on having to spend on classroom supplies, leaving us with a profit of $24. Then we take the $500 bonus from last year, subtract the $24 extra from this year and we are in the hole $476).

All this makes me wonder, why are we still here? Yeah, school starts on Tuesday, but it's rather obvious to me that our school isn't concerned about it's teachers. I mean, our corporate just spent thousands of dollars paying THREE guest speakers, renting out TWO ballrooms at a fancy resort near Miami and renting charter busses for all our schools (approx. 15 in all) PLUS feeding us breakfast and lunch, one would think they could afford a little help for underpaid struggling teachers, at least give them money for the classrooms. But they don't, instead they waste money on pointless conferences, and telling us that kids are their priority after I was just told, by corporate mind you, that our priority was to stuff our classrooms as full as possible to get more money. And after Mark was told, at a pointless teacher meeting, that teachers don't have to be concerned with catering to individual kids, because our top notch (again, excessive sarcasm) research team has found the data driven code that will prove to be more effective than paying attention to your students. So I ask myself again, why am I still here? And you know what? I don't know. The only somewhat reasonable explanation is that it would look bad on my resume to say that I really only worked at this job for 6 months. Which isn't exactly motivational, especially when I wake up tomorrow morning and go to work, on a Saturday.