He’s Captain of this Ship…

Look at me dropping another post so soon…gotta love the consistency.

I gotta vent about what happened last Thursday.

I was able to secure a partnership with an art organization to have someone come into my classroom and teach my students for a few weeks. This partnership was brought to my attention by my department supervisor and paid for by the district by the way. The instructor would be coming in once a week, going through the program with students and I would get a little break from teaching while also being able to learn something cool alongside my students. This past Tuesday, I got the email that we could start whenever I was ready so I said let’s start asap. Everything was already in place…or so I thought.

I sent out a courtesy email to our site admin Thursday morning and CC’d my department lead and the art instructor. I just wanted to let them know so no one would be confused when an unknown person showed up to campus. One of the assistant principals was talking about how amazing it was but the principal was not as enthusiastic. I got a response from my principal that basically reminded me that as the captain of the ship, he needed to be the one to sign off on any new collaborations before they hit the classroom.

Now you’re probably thinking, duh, he should know about what sort of things are being taught in the classroom. But you should know, this man has never provided any support for anything in my almost two years at this site. He doesn’t even know what. I teach. Everything I have (classroom supplies, tables & chairs for students, an apple tv for projection) has been provided through efforts from my department supervisor and the district. This collaboration didn’t even need his approval. I’m not the first nor will I be the last person to have this sort of collaboration. They happen all the time. I was genuinely confused.

I spoke with a few of my colleagues thinking maybe I didn’t follow some sort of protocol and they assured me I did everything right. The instructor was texting me and told me she was still showing up so she did. She’s going to be teaching sustainable fashion design so her first lesson was on how to thread the sewing machine and she had the students sketch out some cool designs.

This partnership is going to be great, it’s just frustrating how the principal chose to respond.