A(nother) place to write

So I barely mentioned (in my other journal) that we had an in-service last Friday. During that meeting my boss dropped a bombshell. He is looking across the river for a job. They have him so stressed here that he is ready to leave. It would be terrible for everyone over here if he did. It is so typical of school administration. You get someone who is great at their job and then you overwork him and stress him out so much that he wants to leave. Of course the people over the river might not want him (they’d be stupid if they didn’t) because they’d have to pay him what he is worth. He has more experience than almost all of their principals put together. He has experience as principal, administrator, director and coordinator for adult, high school, alternative and vocational education. And he has a doctorate to boot. We all like him. He is a visionary who cares. We think that is why the administration doesn’t like him. I don’t know what is going to happen to our program if he leaves. I guess we shall just take another step back, into the twentieth century and we will have to put up with some a-hole who hates kids and teachers and just looks at the bottom line. (Money)

It is the second day of testing and four students did not show up who should have. Two of them are my students. One of them has two kids. Of the eight students in the room two look as if they have done any pre-writing. One girl finished with only one paragraph which was about 12 lines long. Sometimes you don’t even have to read the prompt to know that it is not sufficient. We have 12 minutes left to go and only two people are still working. What is most disturbing is the number of people who were supposed to come to the test and did not both showing up. Or perhaps the fact that the test coordinator has no clue of those who are in our program so he cannot make a comprehensive and accurate list. His list included people who we haven’t seen for months.
(from 3/15/06, mailed from work to home) Can't use this at work anymore, it's blocked.