And the Winner Is...

I reached visitor number 5,000 on my counter! And the winner is.....

Me.

Oh. Well. Not so flattering when you are your own biggest fan.

Moving on.

I seem to have made an enemy on my teaching team. Another fourth grade teacher (the grade level chair, in fact). The reasons are as follows:

1. In a presentation to the new superintendent yesterday, our principal showed a slide show of the faculty and staff in action. Most teachers had 2 pictures. I had 5...at least. Now. Before you get all hyped up. I had NOTHING to do with this presentation. I HATE being caught on camera. I wanted to crawl under the table and hide. I've endured much teasing over this. Most teachers have chosen to recognize that I'm in no way trying to one-up anybody and that I'm mostly embarrassed over this situation. This particular teacher seems to hold the incident against me personally.

2. During the mad rush that is dismissal yesterday, she called my room. I didn't answer the phone because I was in the middle of switching back the homerooms between myself and my team teacher(which means almost 4o kids trying to get to the right location, at the same time). The phone connects directly to my voice mail and an adult in the office will page me over the speaker, if it's important. So...I didn't pick up. This left her miffed, and coming into my room wanting to know why I didn't pick up. Why did she need me? To find a phone number for an upcoming field trip location. From a brochure we ALL received, but she threw out. Dismissal is not the time to hunt down a small brochure. I found the brochure after the day was over and delivered it to her then.

3. She walked in on a conversation I was having with my team teacher about another teacher we work with and some difficulty I am having with a particular incident. She demanded to know why I was so "mean" to this individual and told me that she had been nice to me last year. This from the woman who only calls me by my last name (think, military style) and barely talked to me last year. Then, in the same breath....

4. She's upset at me because a THIRD teacher who provides additonal support to struggling readers who are NOT identified in special ed, approached her and asked to do her daily lesson with her small group, including two of my kids, in this "angry" teacher's room. Last year, I had her working in my room, she takes her group of 5 kids, sits at one of my kidney tables and does her thing with them. We worked really well together. This year, though, I have a special ed teacher in my room all afternoon. THREE teaching adults, and 18 kids is just too much going on. It's not fair to the kids, and my room is not really an option this year.

So all of this is my fault and has resulted in some anger directed towards me. I'm rolling my eyes and moving on. There's not really much I can do about and don't really feel that I caused the situation, just happened to be the victim in situations she is not happy with. Oh well. So many other things to worry about. I'll just lay below the radar for a little while.

That's my vent.

I'm done now.

Thank you for listening.

You may return to you regularly scheduled evening.