Through the Looking Glass: 4. Teacher Transfer Tool

Sunday, November 11, 2012

4. Teacher Transfer Tool

As an educator of more than thirty years it is a certainty that I have changed schools more than once. The reasons for pursuing a transfer can be as varied as the clientele I have worked with. Whether it is the need to pursue a new challenge.... to have a change of scene.... or to preserve my sanity, I have always viewed my transfer as welcome and needed.

I have found that there are several excellent indicators as to whether a move is required. Over a period of years they have never failed to point me toward the door when I needed to go. As a collegial gesture I offer them as a guide to those of you who are doing the "Should I stay or should I go ?" shuffle.

Transfer Indication Tool
Score 0 if this never happens in your school.
Score 1 if this rarely happens.
Score 2 if the following situations occur regularly.
Score 3 if the events described are as common as breathing.

_1. Your principal frequently pages himself over the intercom without disguising his voice.
_2. Meetings are scheduled for 9:09, 10:10, 11:11,3:03 and so on.
_3. The office staff has developed an unnatural phobia around staplers and tape dispensers.
_4. Co-workers often motion you over and go back to work just as they appear they were going to say something to you.

_5. Several staff members have named each of their pens and insist that meetings cannot possibly begin until they are all present.
_6. The most intelligent person on staff has highlighted their shoes so they won't lose them.
_7. There is always at least one individual soaking their fingers in 'Palmolive' at every staff meeting... and it's never the same person twice.
_8. You find yourself exuberantly announcing that you got the highest score ever on Tetris in the middle of a staff meeting.
_9. Everyone on staff receives an e-mail from the VP stating "If anyone needs me for anything I'll be in the bathroom until June".

_10.The character that falls over in his chair every staff meeting gets up sternly one day and announces "It's not funny anymore!"

If you scored
0-10 There is just enough neurotic behaviour here to keep things amusing for another couple of years. Don't be in too big a rush to get out.
11-20 Start being a little more aware of the voices in your head that are hysterically screaming for increased dosages of Prozac and Valium. Look at the possibility of a new setting before the idea of getting an intravenous coffee drip becomes any more serious.
21-30 How you lasted this long is a marvel of modern masochism. It is obvious that this staff has spent far too much time with the students. It is imperative that you find a new school before electroshock therapy and lobotomies are your only recourse to a normal life

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Introduction

Having moved at least twenty-five times in fifteen years has opened a world of learning to me. In six decades, an education ranging from the coldness of large cities to the isolation of remote rural locations to the busybody gossip of small towns and the wonder of the prairie and it's ocean of grass have all left their impressions on me.

Recently I relocated to a small city in British Columbia. It touted itself as a historical, cultural, educational and, over-all wonderful, place to live. Once I was past the trees and the rocks, the heights and the hills, the water and the wind, I calmed down and was ready to look at the people I was sharing that space with.

Every location I have ever squatted has had it's share of characters. Players in the cities along with the wide range of tinfoil hat wearers and baggy pants skaters were a given. Pop up strangers at odd hours surprised me with their appearance in the middle of nowhere. Rumours of my serial killer past from neighbours I had never met never swayed me. The wonder of gazing on the effects of wind on the grass ocean interrupted by a landowner enquiring why I was leaning on his fence was oft forgiven.

In this new locale a variety of characters as I had experienced elsewhere was a given. The density and variety of them however gave me more surprise than I would have expected.

I had heard comments about this place being a time warp to the sixties. However I only saw few that , by their appearance, I could say lived through the sixties. What apparitions appeared were younger and more colourful than I remember from that vague decade.

Purple haired strong armed accordionists, heavy head shaved violinists clutching tiny instruments, winter coated scarf wrapped individuals in shorts and oddly calm people with large coffees wandered the streets.

They wandered in and out of new age crystal shops, expressed opinions on local radio, bought nothing but organic food. They played jazz on squeeze boxes, made strings and wood sing in ways not intended, talked to themselves as they tightened their scarves and became more serene with each sip of coffee.

Characters here are more concentrated than in any other locale I have ever lived. It is a point of interest as well as point of concern.

It remains to be seen whether I will be mugged with organic carrots, side swiped by hooligan mountain bikers, be harangued with advice on dressing warmly or kept awake nights by jazzy sounds from an errant squeeze box. Whatever the outcome I am certain I could find it in no other place on earth to explore these particular uncertainties.

Until I am transplanted again, I extend every new-ager and boarder, every subculture economist and spiritualist, every would-be and wanna-be my deep thanks for extending me the opportunity of educating myself one measure more.