So my speech teacher blew up on us today. She completely over reacted and totally lost the respect of the entire class over a cell phone that went off during a group presentation.
I should preface this by saying that HER cell phone has gone off twice now in class, once during a student's graded speech, another during a group presentation. Also relevent is the fact that she is a brand new teacher, a GTA in fact who has been given her first class to teach this semester. The problem is she wants to be both our friends, and also our authoritative teacher, and isn't doing a good job of either.
So today, when the first kid's cell phone went off during the groups presentation and I saw her shake her finger at him I thought 'hmmph, she must be joking around...'
Yet 5 minutes later another cell went off and I learned she wasn't joking, she blew up. She stopped the group from presenting so she could yell "Everyone get your phones out right now and turn them off. Not on vibrate, not on silent, OFF!! Get them out and doi it NOW!! Everyone!"
I was fuming.
First, she's a complete hypocrite. I've seen hypocracy before, but never like this unless it was congressional (Mark Foley anyone?). To yell at the entire class for something SHE'S done TWICE is across the line. Yes, there's a line, and it's between excusable hypocrasy and inexcusable hypocrasy, and she went WAY over into the land of inexcusable. WAAAY over it. She took a plane and is thousands of miles on the other side of it by now.
Second, having a bit of experience in leadership myself, if you want to demand peoples respect, you have to always demand it. If you want to earn it, you have to always earn it. If you want to be friends with those you lead, you need to always be their friend. Consistancy is key. Otherwise, you send mixed messages and those you lead will not respect you at all. They might FEAR you, but that's not effective either because they will stab you in the back the first chance they get.
The kicker for me, was as soon as the group was done speaking, she got up and told us about her planned trip to Vegas over spring break and how she was going to be hanging out with a bunch of her friends, who are all lesbians and always love to party.
If any of you are thinking of being teachers, don't do this! If you are thinking of being in any type of leadership position, be consistant! Not everyone believes that you can effectively lead when you're friends with those you're leading, but I say I did it pretty well in Iraq, and if it worked there it can work pretty much anywhere. Be a friend, be a boss, be a tyrant, whatever, just always be that way and you'll be much more effective, and the world will run more smoothly, less people will be mad, and maybe if you go into government you can fix some of the problems we're facing now.
Thanks, I just had to rant and get that off my chest.
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