To: Mark Mandel who wrote (172172 ) 9/17/2011 10:25:06 AM From: epicure Respond to I think what is most important, is that I have the freedom to defy both my union and my admin, if I want to. They can both be coercive- though honestly, I've had a lot more problems with admin than with my union. My unions has actually helped me in a few situations, one having to do with an immediate health concern in my building, and they also went with me for the "conference" in which the director of employment told me about taking away half my classes- and although the union couldn't do anything about that, they were at least there. The sad thing is the whole thing happened a month after classes had started, and my poor little freshmen missed me, and their parents were unhappy to lose me- so it ended up rather badly for my high school students who were stuck in to other, preexisting, classes, or reshuffled to other new classes. The other major problem I had with the district is that they hired an absolute incompetent as a principal- and I quit 15 minutes after I met him. Only time in my life I've shaken hands with a boss who absolute repelled me. Turns out the district had to give him the option to leave, or be fired- but only after he'd done two years of damage at our school. And every time I'd meet someone from school in the store, I'd get stories about him- he had an anger management issue, as well as being incompetent (I'm sure the two things often travel together.)
