How to annoy Tortoise
I'm not going to name names here, but we have an administrator who has displayed an almost pathological lack of clue as far as I'm concerned. He seems to have no capacity for updating information -- if he has learned something once, and things change, he won't show any indication of acknowledging the change. Evidence for this hypothesis:
1) The day before Session 1 started, Birdie and I traded classrooms with the Etymologies class next door. We got approval for this from everybody who needed to approve it, and directories were updated to reflect this. Except that this one administrator never figured this out. On at least three separate occasions, he came into our classroom and looked confused until I asked if he was looking for Etymologies. On at least three separate occasions, he was indeed looking for Etymologies, and I directed him one door further down the hall. The first time was understandable, but three times?
2) Before the all-site meeting yesterday evening, this administrator came up to me and said, "So, let me double-check this. You're going to be doing subject area testing tonight?" This threw me. "For Cryptology?" I asked -- Crypto has never done testing on Sunday night. "Oh," he said, "You changed?" What? Yes, I changed. I was teaching Number Theory last session, and now I am teaching Cryptology. But unlike the changing of the classrooms, you knew this well in advance. The contract I signed over a month ago clearly said that I was doing Number Theory for one session and Cryptology for the other session. How do you manage to miss this? This is an administrator who is one of my supervisors -- not the Residential Dean or a Health Assistant. How can you not know what your employees are hired for?
2a) And even if I hadn't switched...I would be teaching Number Theory again. We don't do pre-testing in THEO either. I think I know exactly why he thinks I would be doing testing, but that's yet another tale. Sigh.
-TT
PS: In case you were wondering, the first session wound up just fine. Wonderful kids, got my evals written without trouble, got good comments on the students' evals. Now I'm a touch under the weather, but I think I can kick that in a day or two.