Some frustrations

Our big boss emailed us to set the record straight - that maternity leave MUST be taken as a block, 'including school holidays'.

I was lucky for once, to be the first ever in this school to take the 4 months' maternity leave. And whether I could break up the leave was highly debatable then. The previous-than-previous Admin Manager (since our Admin Managers don't last beyond a few months usually) did show me the circular which included that ridiculous clause. However, she made a check with the HR and told me that I could. I was glad that I could have a longer period of time spent with the baby and my kid although there were a million calls and smses from school even then. Ok, I exaggerated. But it did feel like they were a million.

Apparently, due to the absence of an Admin Manager now, the big boss called up the ministry himself and 'clarified' with us that it should include school hols, as 2 colleagues of mine are about to go on maternity leave and wanted to insert a break in between the Nov and Dec hols so that the hols don't count as their maternity leave, which makes alot of sense.

And I know of schools which allow teachers to break up their leave. If not, it'll be so lugi to give birth in the months of August, Sept and Oct.

School holidays are an entitlement to all teachers. Don't tell me all teachers are also taking maternity leave during this time. I find it totally injustified to include long school hols as part of the maternity leave.

But one thing in common that teachers feel was that it all boils down to the big boss' good-will gesture, or the lack of it.

Sometimes I can't help but feel frustrated with the big boss' decisions on certain matters, like being defensive of the inefficient and ineffective admin stuff and printing lady. Just because he works closely with them, and they give him alot of faces by showing him due respect doesn't mean they treat us in the same manner. When they are rude to us, make life difficult for us, or try to heap their work on us (like the printing lady asking me to do the level printing myself on a few occasions, and the clerks asked me where to find the leave application form and telling me that they were too busy to process a CSC card for my kid and in the end I had to plead with a HR person to help me cum self-help), he does nothing about it. Of course I didn't give him all these feedback since they won't be well-received, given his defensive attitude. But I'm very sure some teachers would have given him feedback on how his beloved admin staff who had been slogging hard for the school for 17 to 20 years had been treating the teachers and had gone ignored.

I also get miffed with the fact that he actually accused the teachers of abusing the photocopiers when they are spoilt. Given the high usage - 2 miserable photocopiers shared by over 90 teachers, common sense would tell you that it's inevitable that the machines would break down frequently. But just because the under-educated repairman said,"It's because the teachers pulled out the papers too roughly and that's why the gadget is broken." he came after us. For goodness' sake! Who would want to 'pull out the papers' if the machine had been working properly in the first place?!! Now, one of the machines doesn't give decent prints ie. the centre portion of the print is always blank. So naturally, ALL 90 teachers would use the other photocopier since we are such hardworking and honest-to-goodness teachers who want DECENT and CLEAR prints for our students, right?

What happens?

That pathetic, miserable photocopier now looks even more miserable and pathetic because the drawer handle - the ledge of the drawer in which we load the papers - is broken and totally missing in action. I bet this will make the talk of the next Contact Time.

Can all Big Bosses understand that we are just some nice people who are trying VERY hard to make a living? We just want machines who are hardy enough to stand the VERY high usage of 90 teachers. And 1 pathetic printer in the staffroom is NOT enough. I hate to say this, but my previous school is definitely very generous when it comes to teachers. It had 5 printers I believe and one of them is a colour laser printer which worked intelligently and was darn fast in printing. Teacher did not have to fight over the printers and put in our precious papers (strictly 2 realms per term. No more!) just to have them used by other teachers who print at their cubicles without putting in their own papers. Or just to have our printjobs done on used papers, put in by some idiots who think that other teachers would print rubbish.

My previous big boss was certainly very intelligent. He makes the teachers happy and it boosts the teachers' morale. And this in turn translates to better results. He knew teachers wanted to teach, so he didn't load teachers with unnecessary workload, except for meetings which teachers there seemed to find enjoyable. And after that, created more work for themselves.

I don't have anything personal against my current big boss. I'm just upset that he doesn't come down to our level to understand us enough. I know he is trying, but I can't help but feel that it's not enough. I like him for his seemingly understanding nature. If you clarify matters with him, he seems to accept them. But I don't understand what's so hard about understanding teachers. We're not a bunch of lazybums who want the pay for nothing. We just want to teach, seriously.