Wed Dec 17, 2003
I’m going absolutely mental, today was just one of those days. Nothing was sinking in and I was starting to zone out and lose all concentration and coherence of thought. We had a staff meeting in the morning where Debbie handed out our January schedules (a.k.a. 30 reasons not to get up in the morning), we have those ‘special classes’ starting up again which means more hours, early mornings, less sleep and about three more years carved off my life expectancy. Then in the afternoon, we had another meeting and Won Jang Nim giving us her synopsis on our Open Classes. The main complaint coming through, as far as I can make out through all the indirect insinuations that passes off for communication around here, is that the kids pronunciation sucks and we have to do something about it. In other words the mothers are complaining that their kids don’t have cute little American accents like “they have on TV”.
It’s not the complaints that bother me, in fact these days I just go “Uh huh….Uh huh….uh huh….ok…yep, got it. do this, do that. No problem…” while dreaming of that virgin beach somewhere in Mexico that’s just waiting for me to arrive (and today friends, that dream was more vivid than ever). It’s more the staff politics which sicken me, I don’t even want to go into it here, but certain people are getting blamed and there is such a spirit of vicious unkindness being evoked in the whole situation that it saddens and perplexes me. None of us are professionals with a wealth of knowledge and training to draw from, something that would enable us to collaborate and engage in a constructive fruitful dialogue. But blame and accusation is being proffered instead of suggestions in the spirit of encouragement and camaraderie. I don’t know, perhaps I’m being overly sensitive to the whole issue, but I have a problem with that. Anyways, B.O.R.I.N.G. Who wants to hear about out-of-context work issues. Went to Popporos again tonight, chicken crème pasta and chicken pizza, yummy, we deserved it.