Why am I the one to call about “is there basketball practice today?” Do I look like the coach? (who is, btw, an extremely organized person whom I’m sure sent home a schedule of practices and his phone number.)
Do I care that your kid is getting picked on at lunch? Well, yes, I do, a lot. I have a kid too, I can empathize. Can I do one damn thing about it? Not a chance. Talk to an administrator. No, I don’t know where one is. If you go around to the main office, they track employees. I track students.
Can I arrange a meeting with your son’s teachers? No, you need the grade-level counselor. The number is on that piece of paper you just got my number from. My number says “Attendance.” Next to “counselor,” that’s the number you need. No, I don’t know if she’s in her office. I don’t track employees, I track students.
Random vents, kvetches and plain bitching–if daddy’s on the birth certificate, and you don’t have a court order, I can’t keep him from your kid. Sorry. I’ll karate him and call the cops if you have a restraining order and he tries to break it, but without the order, it’s my butt if I interfere with parental rights.
If I’m muttering my way through a twenty-three page instruction booklet to get the new ^%&%^&^ software for the new auto-dialer-call-the-folks-get-the-kids-to-school thingy, I’m not going to take your call. Especially not when I have to get the damn thing started in the next ten minutes to comply with state law, and doubly especially not to hear your sob story about how you live 1.87 miles from the school and it’s not fair that I’m not letting your kid ride his skateboard to school anymore. Newsflash, I never did let the kids do it, that’s not my call. I did kindly loan space in my office for the storage of skateboards during school hours–but I’m not the one who decided they couldn’t bring them anymore. That would be the administrators. Why? Just guessing, but it might have something to do with the fact that though they’re not to be ridden on campus, four skateboarders were doing tricks on the handicap ramp and managed to break a rather large window on the front of the school.
Got a problem with that? I’ll transfer you to the main office, they’ll find you an administrator to complain to. No, they won’t do anything about it. But neither will I, so why should I be stuck on the phone?
No, I don’t know anything about the yearbook. Yes, I do work here. I’m one of at least a hundred adults who work here, and I don’t know a darn thing about the yearbook. Or the Outdoor Club, or the fundraiser, or the free lunch program. Let me transfer you to the office, they keep track of things like that. I keep track of students.
Yes, your daughter ditched today. I don’t care if she brought home homework. Every one of her six different teachers marked her absent, two monitors who normally see her every day didn’t, she didn’t spend the day in the nurse’s office or the counselor’s office or the main office, she was not here.
I’m positive. I track students.
When I’m not jumping through bureaucratic hoops. No auditors still. Which is good, because I realized today they’ll for sure want to see my enroll/withdrawal register, and I haven’t got it caught up. (insert another random kvetch–here’s how I do the enroll/withdrawal register. I print out the Enroll/Withdrawal Register Report from our computer program. I copy the information on that report into an Excel spreadsheet. Ta da!! Supposedly important record, already completely and totally done for me by that wonderful piece of technology, yet I have to do a seven-page-per-grade Excel document to–what? Show I can type? I can read? What the *&^*&^ is that about, anyway?)
Ooh, possibly brilliant idea–Enroll/Withdrawal Register Report saved to file, cut and paste and bim, bam, boom, hours and hours of painful typing of lots and lots of names and numbers and codes happily done? I can’t wait to try it!
Then I can get back to tracking students. Which, silly me, I think is important.