Caught in the Middle, or Things That Wouldn't Make Me Cry on Any Other Day

As previously mentioned, we have had issues with students logging in for other students. This is partly because the students are lazy, partly because they don't see anything wrong with it, partly because they don't want to do stuff they're not supposed to do when logged in under their own name, and a little bit because we have had some non-working logins and some new students who didn't have their own logins for a few days. (Wow, my grandmother would kill me for writing that sentence. Good thing she doesn't read this.)

We used to be able to log on to the generic "new teacher" login for the kids, so they could at least do their work, but the generics were canceled because somebody or somebodies (don't know who, it's a generic login) were using the generic to visit sites which did not strictly apply to their job. Which is a big no-no here in The District. So who suffers? Well, technically it's the children, but really it's me, because I get to tell them that they can't login, and then their friends log them in, and I get to tell them that they shouldn't do that, and then decide whether or not to kick them off the computers. I hate to do that when they're really trying to do their work.

So, thinking that I could solve at least the not having logins problem. I think about going to the school tech facilitator about it. Then I recal that the STF and I had previously discussed this problem, and she had said something about wanting some generic student logins for new students, but the tech people had never gotten back to her.

Like the helpful person I am, I fire off an email to my district library supervisor asking if this can happen. No response until after lunch, when all hell breaks loose upon my head.

The STF comes down to the library and lets me have it, both barrels. We don't want generic logins, because then we will not be able to tell what student did a bad thing (not when, but if; because obviously watching the students has gone out of style). I explain to her that I must have misunderstood our previous conversation, and I apologize. But that doesn't stop her from repeating her reasoning on why we don't want generic logins at least four more times, and complaining about getting the email forwarded from my supervisor (which I also apologized for) because once, ONCE, at the beginning of the year when I didn't know she was the STF, I went to my district library supervisor with a question and she got an email from said supervisor asking why she wasn't helping me. She has never let this go. She thought she was helping me. Doesn't she help me? And she wouldn't put up with this noise around the computers that the other teacher allows; she'd kick them all out of the library.

Etc., etc., etc. I apologized until I was blue in the face and started to get mad. I nearly lost it when a short-term student who never got a login got an attitude with me about not being able to log in. I wrote an email to my library supervisor explaining that it was a misunderstanding and retracting my request, but she's already moving forward, and she's going to make generic logins, even though the STF does not want them. Which is just going to piss the STF off more. And guess who gets caught in the middle? Oh, yeah, that's me.

I'm now going to manufacture an excuse to visit the bathroom, let myself cry for a little bit, and tell myself that one annoyed person does not negate the fact that almost everyone else thinks I'm doing a good job.