egnever

A few weeks ago, before we (somewhat) successfully navigated a discussion about collaborating and sharing prep loads, I was hating on my co-teacher. In addition to all the not working together, she was also not cleaning up after herself. Our school is housed in a church and we must essentially "disappear" every Friday. There is a lot of putting away. All of which was begin done by me.

After a particularly stressful Friday, I returned to our shared classroom and discovered that she had not done a lick of work there, had not touched the work folders or worksheet piles or electronics or office supplies or textbooks or box of literature books or pencil sharpener, on and on and on. She had gone home and left thirty minutes of work for me.

In the front of the classroom was a big pile of student projects, most of them total crap, but a few were nice and neat and perhaps worthy of hanging on to. We had pushed them under the whiteboard and posted a sign the whole week that read, "Take your projects home or else we will throw them away." We planned that together, let's be clear.

Well, I am nothing if not true to my word, and so Friday afternoon, after I hauled all of our shit to the closet and to the parking lot bin, while I was silently cussing her out, I threw the whole pile of posters in the trash. Including the two posters that I knew for a fact were not student projects but were hers and had fallen into the crap pile that morning. I felt not a single drop of remorse.

All last week she kept exclaiming that she was missing this one particular poster (trash bin) that this kid had made and was going to be pissed if he found out she lost it. I kept shrugging and shaking my head that I hadn't seen it and even alluded to the fact that it may have gotten thrown out. I know revenge is a dirty thing, but I can't tell you how good it made me feel.