Too often I witness people falling victim to etiquette while not saying something that needs to be said. An example of this would be the behavior of administrators, office staff, and teachers at my kids’ elementary school.
The 2021-2022 school year was the first year back to some normalcy after Covid protocols. The school year started without masks, and then masks were required for a bit, and then after the world didn’t die of covid the mask mandate was lifted. After that things were pretty much back to normal, except the teachers and administration at my school acted as if there was no way they could plan field trips because things were still “up in the air”.
But the other elementary schools in our district plus many neighboring district elementary schools had field trips (including an overnight one!!). We even had a temporary principal come in for a bit last year and this principal made a point to tell the teachers they could change their minds and schedule field trips and only a few grade levels chose to do so.
So what is the truth? The truth is that the teachers and principal chose not to do the work of taking the children on a field trip. Now I’ve heard the principal doesn’t make it easy on the teachers when it comes time to get approvals. So I don’t know all the nuances of the truth. But I am willing to say the truth and put it out here.
You can’t fix a problem if people refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem and speak up about it.