A bunch of teachers gathered at the end of the year at the home of one of our colleagues for our annual barbeque, party and drink fest, to celebrate the end of another year at the Junior High School. We normally did this every year at a nearby home, as we were “hot to trot” for beer and chips at the end of a long day.
That year the new principal decided to evaluate us all on the last day, a normally annual event, but his decisions were made after his first year. He did these without the “benefit” of looking at the previous year’s reviews. He felt, and understandingly so, that he could make his decisions based on his own review and not be affected by previous years occurrences. We all had a blank slate on which to start.
This was a noble exercise, and one that should have been rewarded or rewarding. However, as these noble experiments have the possibility of backfiring, this one “took the cake”.
It was the last day, a very bad move because people had no time to respond. Secondly, he told us all we didn’t have to agree with his review, but before we left we had to sign that we had seen it, a nerve racking experience only done in prison camps etc.
He hadn’t counted on most of us gathering immediately afterwards; angry, together and drinking, to plot his demise.
The events rolled out and escalated from general anger to death threats, to action. At least cooler heads prevailed and between us, with many unhappy senior teachers available, and the addition of a Supervisor, also a bit drunk, we called the superintendent who was willing to see us. Thankfully he agreed for a later time and not in our current drunken mood. (He didn't say that, I did.) Even the superintendent was wise enough to recognise a situation he could easily diffuse by putting it off for a weekend.
The next week he met with representative teachers, the principal, and it was cleared up the following fall. A noticeably quieter principal redid all the forms to correspond more directly to the former teacher evaluations we all had received in the past.
He was probably correct to do what he thought was best, but he did get his comeuppance on this one, He was well meaning, just not very practical.
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