Random community mom: It’s so disappointing that the school hired someone to replace [The Church Lady] who only wants to do the bare minimum. How does your daughter like her, the new girl?
Choir Mom: My daughter really enjoys her and says she’s learning a lot, more than she ever did with [The Church Lady]. Where did you get the idea that the new director only wants do to the bare minimum?
Community Mom: Well, first she cancelled their trip to Disney World that the kids had been fundraising for for 3 years…
Choir Mom: The board cancelled that – that decision was made before [The Church Lady] announced she was leaving.
Community Mom: (unfazed and not listening)… and now she won’t even give the kids lessons. She just wants to go home right at 3 and not be involved with them at all!!
Choir Mom: She doesn’t have a piano at home – that’s a different story. She is right out of college and pianos aren’t cheap.
Community Mom: The other lady just taught them right in the choir room and now this new girl is saying she isn’t allowed, which has to be a lie. She just doesn’t want to do it and won’t admit it. What a disappointment.
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At the beginning of the year, I had several students and parents ask about piano and voice lessons and would I be providing them to the students like The Church Lady before me? I explained that I didn’t have a piano at home, so I would have to seek permission from School #1 to use the choir room, after hours (especially since I wasn’t going to give lessons for free). The parents all assured me that it would be fine; The Church Lady had done the same thing for years and they had paid her.
When I sought permission from Principal Hugs-A-Lot, it was not fine. He got very agitated and told me that anything I did in this school building and for this school and its students was covered under my contract; if he found I was taking money for ‘doing my job’, he would have that contract terminated. I explained that the parents would be confused by this, because that was the previous practice – they had paid The Church Lady for private instruction in the choir room. He blew up at me, told me that I was lying; The Church Lady had asked the same permission and he had told her unequivocally, NO. She wouldn’t have gone behind his back and blatantly defied him and he suggested I do the same.
Being as my contract only covered assigned duties (which DID NOT include unlimited private instruction outside of the contract day) and I did not have a supplemental contract description for my ‘head choir director’ supplemental (at all. None. It didn’t exist. Yet. There will be a forthcoming post about that…), I let the parents and students know that I would not be able to provide individual instruction at the school. If they had a piano in their home, we could talk about private instruction at their home (which no one expressed an interest in).
But by seeking permission, then not defying my boss, sneaking around, lying and risking my job, I was now a lazy liar, too, in the court of public opinion.
And in public schools, I’ve learned, public opinion is the only opinion that matters.
Donita Westman 