August 27, 2008

It's That Time of Year

School is about to begin and something has been crossing my mind a lot lately. Pleeeeez, don't let that first day of school come OR hurry up and get here already.

I really dislike this time of year. I work in an elementary school office and we have only 2 secretaries for the entire building. Unfortunately, my title is Special Education Secretary, but most days I don't get a whole lot of time to spend on Special Ed stuff. I mostly am running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I usually find myself trudging through the office grabbing this or that for teachers OR helping a parent on the phone with a lot of questions that we sent out 15 notices explaining already OR waiting on a parent in the office who last minute wants to hand in some paperwork that we asked for 2 months ago OR babysitting the students whose parent has come in for a meeting, but doesn't want their little darlin' presence at the meeting. So, you can understand the frustration, maybe?

The worst part is that the special education staff keep asking me, "Why haven't you gotten this done for me yet....I mean you had all summer and there was NOTHING going on." Yeah, right, NOTHING! The other day I had someone somewhat accuse me of being lazy! You know it took all I had to hold myself back. How can people call me that when they have no idea that I generate at least 17,605 letters and notices all in a few months time? I schedule over 300 meetings to coordinate with the schedules of 3 different administrators, parents, service providers, county workers, teachers, aides, etc. all in 45 school days. I answer the phone, wait on teachers, other staff members, and parents. I make copies for people who swear they have no time to make them, but then go out into the hallway and have a 20 minute conversation with a fellow teacher. I cover for my boss who has to lock herself into her office and chill, because she can't deal with all the chaos. How come I can't go do that? I wonder what I'm supposed to do when I'm on the phone and two different people are trying to have a conversation with me near my desk at the same time as someone is talking into my ear on the phone. I usually try to whisper, "I'll be with you in a minute." Which usually gets the response of "I only need this one little, tiny thing." While the person in the phone is saying, "What? What did you just say?"

NO, I don't do much, do I?

Oh, well, sorry for the vent, but I do feel much, much better.

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