Melissa's Place

The Best Perspective

Our school has been uprooted with no end in sight. Reorganization isn’t a thing that’s new to teachers in the Peel Board, however, this year, with the government’s strict caps for class sizes, split classes are cropping up everywhere. They have become the rule rather than the rarity. They have become unavoidable, even when it would seem to me that they are not for the best interest of the students.

There quickly follows a heated debate about what IS in the best interest of the child and WHO should be deciding that. From where each person stands, someone else is making self-serving choices and protecting themselves from change. Apparently no one cares what is best for kids. Everyone is an ugly, no-good hooligan in someone else’s eyes.

I feel caught between caring and not. That’s not exactly what I mean. I don’t mean that I don’t care. I just mean that it would be so much easier to resign myself to whatever fate the administration or the stronger willed teachers in my school with the political clout decide for me. Wouldn’t it be easier to just DEAL? Tell me what I must do and I will learn to suck it up and I’ll move on.

Because what has happened is lovely, professional, optimistic co-workers have become consumed by angst and anxiety and outright anger over the perceived injustices occurring around them. Teachers are passionate. I wouldn’t have it any other way. But it makes for heated school politics.

So I was “chatting” with a friend who is a new teacher and she seemed bizarrely calm amidst the chaos. She’s at the bottom of the totem, so to speak, and the possibility of change to her teaching package is very real, yet despite how many times I ask how she’s feeling, she responds serenely that she is fine. Que sera sera! She’s okay with change….or not. It’s just one year, she reminded me. Then she quickly back-pedalled by adding that maybe she doesn’t have enough perspective to know! But how perfect her perspective is! Untainted by this tunnel vision we develop in our school community. If you wake early enough and spend enough hours there and stay late enough and then come home to work some more…soon you’re eating, sleeping, breathing school. Everything school seems big. Everything school seems to be EVERYTHING.

But it’s not, she reminded me. Because she’s new enough to remember that. And I always swore I would remember too. Some people are in passionate love affairs. Some people are struggling to raise a family on their own. Some people are unsure whether they’ll live to see Christmas. Some people are creating new life!

A split class is difficult, but I wouldn’t even call it a hardship. And some day we’ll look back at ourselves and laugh.