Observed. Yet again...

So this time I decided to do a lesson on civil disobedience. It was 9 in the morning and I had one student. The trainer loved it. I clearly have the lesson plan thing down and I have knowledge base of the content. She was concerned about my classroom management skills, student were walking in while I was teaching and one said that it sucked that the teacher wasn't there (oh did I mention he took the whole week off!) So I should have addressed his disrespectful comment.

I told her my concern that I will plan beautiful engaging lessons, but the students will go crazy and I won't be appreciated for being a good teacher. All the administrator will see is crazy students. That happened a lot at east side house. I did significant things to bring their levels up but was still known as the teacher who couldn't control her class, so I suddenly look very incompetent in the eyes of the principal. (It pays to mention that at the time I had trouble managing them I had some crack dealing pimps, a girl who got an abortion every week, and a boy who went off his lithium from time to time. They were so wild and crazy. It felt so beyond my capacity to deal with some of these insane students. I mean literally just came out of a mental facility insane.) It's just not fair to me. That I should work so hard perfecting my craft of delivering interactive winning lesson plans, to be shat on by some of these folks who don't appreciate the hard work I put in. (or are not mature enough understand anything outside themselves) I think I need to teach at the university level.

It's the thing principals focus on. They see young white girl and they think management, management, management. It seems like all they care about. I know it's important, but there are other aspects of teaching besides crowd control.

You know this classroom management issue is a problem for a lot of women and principals know it. They probably try to hire men when they can. It is very connected to how women have been socialized as a female. Women are not natural figures of great authority, they have more of a cooperative negotiating nature, that may be good for working with adults, but can get you into big trouble with the students.

I'm playing the demographics card a lot because these principals see so many of us that they often see us as types: we are our race, age, gender, sexuality... and they rarely see us as people.

One of my biggest fears is that I will spend far too much time managing the class that I won't be able to teach these incredible awesome lesson plans. I just need to be an aggressive dictator. I need the confidence for that, which is what I lacked today. She thought I could involve all the students that came in and believe me if we were at East Side House , you know I'd be getting everyone involved and I'd go back to being myself again. I hate these damn observations.