Way too much work this week, starting with last weekend when I worked all the hours there were catching up on grading and prep work, but also on my own coursework.
Monday I took photos of the 35 bulletin boards showing all the in-class projects and put them into a power point presentation. I also found a really cool "science" page border and made signs for all the tables by teacher and grade. Tuesday my students checked in their projects, and I had to review all ~150 of them to decide which ones were worthy of judging. Then Wednesday was the actual science fair, which involved getting 300+ projects set up in the gym, and the top tier judged.
Only half of my volunteer judges showed up, both great guys who worked hard.
I haven't been sleeping and my RA has been in a vicious flare for what seems like weeks now, so I was even more exhausted than even all this work would involve (what with full-time teaching and two grad classes continuing uninterrupted). Maybe that's why, when a top student came by to pick up her display board, which clearly did not follow the guidelines, I commented to her that her font was too small before telling her how excellent her work was. That didn't sit well with her father, who called me out on criticizing her after she'd worked so hard. My apologies and subsequent praise did nothing to mollify him, and he went on to harangue me, quite loudly, for a good 10 minutes or more.
When he finally left, one of the judge (I'd only met him 2 hours before!) came over to see if I was OK, and I immediately burst into tears. Mortifying. I wasn't crying because I'd been yelled at, I was crying because he was so very kind, and I was so tired, and the whole situation was just so ... unnecessary. My AP came in to see me, because the peeved parent had gone on to harangue her, too.
The DH bailed on helping me with the break down, because... reasons. But he did drop off DD, so there were four of us to fold up and stack 300 tri-folds, stack up a few dozen binders, take down the signs, and gather up the various odd materials that the students had brought in even though we'd told them they should not.
When I finally got home, I had to sort through the ballots and figure out who won in both the elementary and junior high divisions. It wasn't obvious so I had to build a spreadsheet. Then on Thursday morning I had to fill out the certificates and accidentally wrote in a wrong name... oops. But other than that, and 150+ reports and the 150+ display boards that need grading by the end of next week, it's OVER.
P.S. Today, I checked in with my AP again to see if there was any fall out from the obnoxious encounter. I was advised to pretend it hadn't happened, which I have been doing, out there in the real world. The parent had a follow-up meeting with admin and he is "willing to let it go." When I heard that, I thought my brain was going to explode (and given that whatever-it-is on my pituitary, maybe that actually will happen one of these days.) That guy owes me an apology. He chastised me for criticizing his daughter in public but then literally yelled at me for 5 minutes, walked away, and then came back to yell at me more, dragging up stuff that happened last year, when his daughter won the district fair! It was so bad that another parent came by to tell me I didn't do anything wrong, and that she would stick up for me to the administration if there was any question, since she heard the entire encounter. And now I really will drop this, and pretend it never happened. I'll never get an apology or even an iota of respect from that guy, so I'm not going to look for either one.
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