TimberWolf55

I just left a similar dictatorship about five months ago. The administration started out with simple changes: mandating unnecessary inclusions in gradebooks and lesson plans with no real reasoning except that “the big boys” were doing it. Rather than having staff development for actual professional enhancement, it was always done to keep up with the educational Joneses down the road a piece.

The final straw for me, I suppose, was when each department was told that they were to use one teacher’s lesson plans, replicate them, and implement them in our classrooms rather than originating our own, even if they complied with standards and whatnot. This came after months of staff discontent and verbal outbursts in faculty meetings — er, “family” meetings — over other issues (lack of communication, failure of administration to uphold discipline policy, etc.).

But when I was told I no longer had any control over what went on in my classroom, that tore it. Female teachers who were in the principal’s “inner circle” stuck around for a while, but it appears now that their personnel structure is falling apart, judging by the job boards and so forth.

Bottom line: yes, men like to be masters of their domains, wherever they happen to be. Just because we may be in an occupation that happens to be thought of as “feminine” doesn’t change our biology. I since have taken a job teaching (get this) female teen felons at a correctional institution. I’m given complete control over content, delivery, and protocol. You know things must have been bad elsewhere if I have to teach in a prison to escape…