Our department head, an excellent teacher and administrator, has decided to step down as department head, and put one of the flightiest twits we have in the department in his place. On the one hand, that ensures she damages fewer students. On the other? She's close friends with a woman who hates my guts because I'm a better teacher than she is, because I have utterly rejected feminism, and because I have accomplished something she never managed, contrary to her wishes: I have children.
I don't know. It may blow over completely. I have created and maintained a habit of keeping my head down; however, given that the new department head is a woman (and nosy), that may not be adequate.
I've already been assigned two sections for fall. Both sections are full. I'm not worried about fall. It's next spring I'm concerned about. If I'm told I'm no longer needed (as I half expect to happen), there goes almost half the household income. For now, at least. Hopefully, it won't happen that way, but...if it does, it may be for the best, considering that will be Odysseus's last semester, and he'll be taking the CPA/CMA exams, and may need as much flexibility as I can grant him.
So, the department is wobbling with the retirement of one of our best this spring, and resignation of our department head effective June 1.
I still don't know if the imp is going to be in kindergarten or not, starting in the fall. If he's not, I'm not entirely sure what to do, since Odysseus has at least one class at the same time I have one of mine. And I'll be in, at work, from probably around 8:30-1:00, three days a week. If he's not, he's going to be homeschooled as far and as fast as I can get him taught. And we'll have to find somebody to watch him while we're in class.
Again, I don't know. The kindergarten teachers seemed to really like him, and claimed that they were going to do their best to get him excepted from the cutoff (that they didn't test number skills--his strong point--may help). So, it may blow over. I may be borrowing trouble.
And isn't it nice that all of this comes down right before the summer break pay drought--after May's paycheck (last working day), I won't get another check until the last working day of September.
So, yeah. It feels like everything's falling apart, all at once. Not a fun feeling.
12 minutes ago
HH, you have a baby sitter if you need one.
ReplyDeleteWon't know until we hear from the school, one way or the other.
DeleteOne of the sad secrets of academe is how one screwed-up person can take a department that runs well and wind up running it into the ground. I always worry every time we have to do a new hire (well, those have been very rare of late) that we're going to get that hostile person who does their best to serve as a chaos agent and destroy the collegiality we do have.
ReplyDeleteWe've also had our share of whackadoodle administrators, but luckily right now I have a really good department chair who is excellent at insulating us from most of the whackadoodle.
That's exactly what I'm afraid of.
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