A Small Victory Over Stupidity

Last year, shortly before school started, one of our math teachers left.  As we were not able to fill the position for over a month, the students in those classes went through a series of substitutes.  When we finally got a full-time teacher in there, the classes were essentially feral.

The teacher we got was very young.  He had been an instructional assistant at another school and thus had to get an emergency credential.  He had no real teaching experience.  It was a gamble, but we needed a permanent body in that classroom.

I won't say things went smoothly, but he worked hard.  I don't recall that he ever once complained.  He asked for lots of help and we gave it to him.  He finished the school year under threat of not being hired back, but come this past August our math department was elated to find that he was coming back to us.

Now he's in a credentialing program and he needs an on-site mentor.  Our principal sent out a request to our department--and we all declined to be the mentor teacher.  Why, you ask?  Because one of the requirements of being a mentor teacher is the completion if 8 hours of training.  There is almost nothing you could offer me to induce me to sit through 8 hours of blah blah blah, and every other math teacher felt the same way.  We'll do anything else for this teacher on site, but we're not going suffer idiocy just so there's a name on his paper.

Apparently, the need was getting critical.  He needed an on-site mentor.  I don't know if the call was put out to all the rest of the teachers at school, but as of this morning he still needed a mentor teacher.  Time seemed to be of the essence.

My principal emailed me today and asked if I'd agreed to do it.  I replied that I had not, that I wasn't going to suffer 8 hours of so-called training.  The reply was, "ok".  I didn't say so, but the fact that I am already working with a student teacher from a nearby university--and doing so without 8 hours of training!--must indicate that I have some competence.  But I digress.

I emailed one of our vice principals a little later, and as an aside mentioned that I got the impression that the principal felt let down.  Later in the day I got a reply from the vice principal:  I'm the mentor teacher, and the training requirement has been waived for me.

I'm going to call this a small victory for common sense.