mayor.
Today we had something called "Principal For A Day" in which the mayor comes to visit the school. It has been a highly anticipated event all year, not by the students, of course, but by the administration. What takes place is that the Mayor comes to our school for a day. Well, not a whole day. Really it was like 2 and a half hours. He tours two classes with handpicked students, he eats a breakfast prepared by the culinary arts department and then he has a press conference about how great he is. Not exactly what our current principal does every day, but close.
I have never seen the kids so collectively pissed, and I know why. The whole situation was entirely faked. We have one of the worst schools in the city and we went around all day pretending like everything was great. There was such high security that the kids weren't allowed to go to the bathroom at all until the mayor left. They actually locked the bathrooms until he left the building. They also took all the metal detectors and x-ray machines out from the front of the building and moved it to the side entrance where they made all the kids enter from. I'm pretty sure they were trying to hide the fact that the school had metal detectors.
It's so frustrating that the administration decided the best way to act was to impress. What we should have done is say "Look! Look how terrifying this place is! Please give us more money and more teachers!" Instead they decided to say "Look! This place is great! Aren't we doing a wonderful job!" The kids saw right through it. I bet the mayor did too.
I have never seen the kids so collectively pissed, and I know why. The whole situation was entirely faked. We have one of the worst schools in the city and we went around all day pretending like everything was great. There was such high security that the kids weren't allowed to go to the bathroom at all until the mayor left. They actually locked the bathrooms until he left the building. They also took all the metal detectors and x-ray machines out from the front of the building and moved it to the side entrance where they made all the kids enter from. I'm pretty sure they were trying to hide the fact that the school had metal detectors.
It's so frustrating that the administration decided the best way to act was to impress. What we should have done is say "Look! Look how terrifying this place is! Please give us more money and more teachers!" Instead they decided to say "Look! This place is great! Aren't we doing a wonderful job!" The kids saw right through it. I bet the mayor did too.
posted by teacher | Thursday, November 02, 2006
2 Comments:
Funny story about locking bathrooms. I know someone who peed on the locked bathroom door.... they were not locked after that day. My school did that too when important people came. minus the searches and xray detectors.
Masking the underlying problem with a facade. The illusion of everything-is-okay. The school gave so much effort and resources to the wrong person, just because he is in a position of authority and is 'privileged'.
I'd be pissed as all hell too, if I were those kids. "All that effort for him, what does that make me?", is how I'd feel.
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