It can’t all be great but I’ll try to make the best of it. When my retiring principal asked me to be department chair last year as they were leaving, I thought that I would love being able to help build up my team and be an advocate for their needs. It quickly became apparent that the outgoing head hadn’t been informed of the change and would do everything short of telling me to go fuck myself to make it a difficult year.

This isn’t about them but about how things have gone. For the most part, good. Other than having my department planning period forced into the 15 minutes between my lunch and lunch duty and fits and spurts of passive aggressive behavior from the other side of the building. Every year, around this time, we are all trying to make sure that we have what we need in place to be more successful than the year before. When programs get to a certain size, adding staff makes sense because it serves the students more equitably than a teacher with an overcrowded class and one adult.

Using technology, I’ve found a way to handle a larger group of students working on a couple of unrelated projects that break them up into smaller groups and are pretty student paced, other than deadlines. Some classes this isn’t possible and having more staff makes all the difference in the world. It is so frustrating to have that kind of situation and not be able to just fix it.

Just keep swimming, I guess.