WW__D

What would you do if-

You got your censored revised presentation handout back from the Board of Education, and were terribly tickled to find the lighter changes amounted to no more than the odd inserted "please" (the handout was written for brevity not courtesy, but point taken- leave nothing to chance). And attached was a letter from our sweet peer advisor apologizing and explaining the necessity of the changes, and throwing in a few harmless silly cracks about the BoE to soothe any possible ruffled feathers.

When your supervisor/presentation partner asked to see the fax, of course you would take off the letter, it's addressed to you after all. And if you saw him eyeing it, you'd offhandedly explain that it was a letter from her to you. But you'd leave it on your desk, being the trusting sort, and go back to tweaking handouts in the computer lab.

What would you do if, forgetting your pencil, you returned to find your presentation partner had gone through the papers on your desk and was bent over it, on the second page of the letter? All the wide-eyed backing away and repeatedly stuttered apologies at your soft "excuse me, that's private correspondence" amounted to nothing more than to affirm he knew he was doing something wrong. What if in his eyes you saw that he was not sorry for the deed itself so much as for being caught?

Even politely expressing my feelings toward the transgression (as communication is the keynote of my handout) and receiving an apology hasn't helped. It was not the contents of the letter, there was nothing in it possibly offensive to anyone. It's the fact that despite having "deliver directly to me" written IN JAPANESE on the first page, and despite having been told not two minutes before that it was personal, he still respected me so little that he'd go on my desk and read my mail.
All the "straightforwardness" and "mutual respect" we've been talking about for well nigh a full month now have gone down the shitter.

So what will I do? I'll go up there in front of everyone, side by side with him, and with no irony preach trust and respect, and sing the praises of team teaching. And I'll do it with a big stupid fucking grin on my face. And you know why? I've been with most teachers in my school for two full school terms now. We've had our problems, and we've gotten through them. Because they respect me. They're wonderful people, and I love 'em to death. And anytime I'll stay after school to do things for them, because I love what I do, and because in some small way I'd like to make life even a little easier for the people who make mine such an absolute delight.

That's the way things should be. All you need is respect and civility, and eventually you can't help liking each other. When you have that, all this overtime, contract and cross-culture bullshit which are points of contention (and are soft spots for the BoE) fade into the background.

I know that this tiny breach of trust pales in comparison to some things that go on in other schools. This only solidifies my desire to somehow keep these things from happening, or fix them when they do. So I applied my methods to my situation. I first talked to my other teachers (like it was for my project, no names) to make sure this was not some cultural 'supervisor as overbearing parent' phenomenon. It's not. It's just him and me. I'm sure he has his reasons for not respecting me- I am after all very young, and my degree is in science, not teaching or English. But he WILL respect me as a person. I made that clear. On his side, he seems relieved I haven't told anyone at my school. I am still very angry, but I'm trying to deal with it in a professional way. And so, damage controlled. On to the preaching.