A repost from 2013:
I think that it is the rule rather than the exception that teachers new to the profession might tend to write exactly what Bradley wrote here a few weeks ago:
……I don’t want to give up, but I’m really feeling pain right now….
For we who have some major miles on our careers, we have seen enough to not believe what most bosses say because many base their work on fear and intimidation, and that causes pain in us. Those bosses may not know they are doing that, but they are blind to the effect of their actions on teachers.
They are so full of a justified desire to change things, and they don’t trust us to be able to do that, and they ignore how we might feel in being stuck with their reform pins. There is another factor at work in this judgment of us that I don’t understand – a blanket of meanness that seems to be alive not just in our profession but everywhere. I can’t even begin to try to figure that out.
I faked ever single document I provided to the administration, absolutely everything I ever handed in. Annick Chen refused to hand in lesson plans for the past three years. I know that new teachers can’t do that, but I encourage them to look to the day when, having impressed enough people via their fine CI instruction, they can ignore requests from idiots.
Once, when the principal confronted her in the hallway about this (you read that right) – I happened to have just stepped out of my room to see this great moment in teaching history – Annick just stood there with all those students walking around her and told the principal to her face that she knows what she is doing and she would not be handing in lesson plans.
Annick looked like a Buddha standing there in the hallway – she had that kind of patient expression on her face with the principal, who had no idea how to react. That was a year and a half ago. This year I didn’t hand in a single lesson plan. Annick and I are still employed.
We old ones have seen too much of the rats. That is why I say to Bradley don’t quit, just chill in your classroom, and make them fire you, if it comes to that (it never will and we both know that). Your honest relaxation amidst this insanity will be the reaction of angels. How to react to insanity? With peace.