Ambushed.....

So this last week at work was a toughie, to say the least. As you will remember from previous posts, I am a teacher's assistant for 2 classes of 3rd graders in a French Immersion school. The teachers are a French man & a Senegalese woman. The Frenchman's class is like behavior disorder central, with one of the students in particular being the butterfly whose wings cause hurricanes. Her whole day is a series of freak-outs, to the point where having to deal with this girl gives me anxiety. I seriously dread dealing with this girl. Miss Senegal's class is well-behaved as she is strict and yells at them a lot.

Anyway, I got an email from the Principal a few days ago, asking me to shadow another assistant in another class for the 1st two hours of the last couple of days. After the 1st day of that, the Lead Teacher (aka not either of the teachers I work for) of 3rd grade pulled me aside & wanted to talk to me about how things were going. I was very direct with her. I told her that I have had more training to wait tables and that I find the Frenchman dismissive & uncommunicative, while Miss Senegal the Tooth-Sucker at least has tasks for me when I arrive in class, little piles of paper with Post-Its on them. We talked about the  situation overall, about cultural differences and expectations and clarification of my role, and I definitely got the impression that there had been some discussion about my job performance amongst the staff and at the end of it, I felt good that I had finally received some sort of feedback. Some of it was negative, to be sure, but at the very least, I felt like Miss Lead Teacher heard what I said.

So yesterday after we dismissed the kids, I found out that that I had a meeting with Miss Senegal, the Frenchman & Miss Lead. Right then. About me. Miss Lead came in with a feedback form, (various criteria on a scale of 1-4 I think, such as "Speaks the Target Language with Students" and "Fosters learning environment") and Miss Senegal had the class & good taste to point out the imperfections in my French, such as switching up masculine/feminine nouns and sometimes just approximating a word in French from either of the other languages I speak. She had a laugh about my saying "calculation" instead of "calcul," for example. The Frenchman, on the other hand, said that my "register" with the kids is not right & I say "bad words" like "dégueulasse" for "disgusting" or "gamin" instead of "enfant" for "kid."

This was starting to get hard to take & I was hoping we could just stick to the criteria, and go on to the next checklist item. But no. Miss Senegal seized the occasion to enumerate every misstep I've made since August 29th.

--From the very first day, you walked into class, you didn't know what the students were doing, they might have been taking a test & you said "Bonjour les enfants" with enthusiasm in your voice, and you perturbed the whole class. The next week, you were too nice to the kids & always sucking your teeth & then you bragged to me  about having 2 Master's degrees and said you didn't like making photocopies...

This is where I had to break in. "No, you misunderstand. I never said that. I don't have 2 Masters, and what I didn't like was being sent to make double-sided photocopies without being given a code for the machine & every other person in the teachers' lounge just watching me have a problem & ignoring my requests for help so they could keep eating and talking about their vacation plans."

This didn't slow down Miss Senegal though, she didn't miss a beat and continued to present her skewed POV on the last few weeks, telling me that I help the kids too much when they are supposed to be doing individual work & the 1st time she asked me to do remedial work 1-on-1 with the kids, I refused (a flat lie--she had taken me by surprise once by asking me to tutor a kid in a subject I wasn't familiar with) and when I did, "my attitude" showed her that I didn't want to do it, and the one time she let me lead the class in a subject, I went too far explaining rounding numbers, and the other time she left me alone with the kids, she came back in and they were talking too much. She seemed really put out that I asked to be shown how to do things, evidently I should be able to figure out how to grade tests without answer keys or use a completely unfamiliar grading scale just by observing, so "in all frankness" she asked, "How can I use you?"

This is one of those places where that split-second translation delay (we were having the whole conversation in French) probably saved me from getting an assault charge. I just cannot tell you how insulted I was by her straying from the task at hand and turning a feedback session into an occasion to annihilate me. I was absolutely "bouche-bé" as the French say (like mouth hanging open in surprise) and Miss Lead Teacher tried to intervene a bit and make Miss Senegal understand my good intentions & divert the conversation & here came the 2nd part of the 1-2 punch when Mr Frenchman hit me with a few anecdotes of how distracting I am for the kids but at least he had some advice to offer about how to keep calm & get better results out of them.

But it really didn't matter what he said. The blood was all rushing up in my ears and I felt like Miss Senegal had taken every positive feeling I had about the job and pissed all over them. By the time the meeting was over, I couldn't look anyone in the room in the face. Then Miss Senegal went over to the table where she had made a big mess from making fruit smoothies with the kids, so guess who had to grab the bowls & the blender carafes & took them & washed them in the sink of the girls bathroom?

Miss Lead Teacher could tell I was upset and came into the bathroom and asked if I wanted to come talk to her. I said "Non, on a tout dit" (No, everything was said). It was rude of me, especially when she was reaching out, but I kept my back turned and my eyes down and just looked at the carafe I was rinsing. She asked if I was OK. I just said "Oui." She asked if she would see me Monday, I just shrugged & said "On verra," (We will see.") But just now, as I'm thinking of it, maybe I said "Tu verras" (You will see)...at any rate, I meant the other.

Obviously, I will be back at work Monday. I wish I didn't have to be though. It sucks that I get along (I think) with every other member of the staff there, but these two....ugh.

I can't tell you how angry I still am about the way this whole thing went. Oh well, it is only until December 20th. Mercifully our Fall Break starts a week from yesterday & I can start looking for new job leads.....



PS. Damn the DA's office for not giving me that translator's job.