On account of the fact that it’s 8:30 already and I literally just got home for the evening, this is going to be an abbreviated post.  Nonetheless, I pose you this:  I am on a probation assistance team for my school district (this is a new thing; I just joined) and have been assigned to help a teacher at another school.  This team, composed of me and three other people, is literally going to decide whether this person is allowed to remain in our district or whether ou(*) is going to be terminated at the end of the school year.  We’ll be doing observations and having meetings and conferences and one of my responsibilities as one of the peer mentors is going to be to do whatever I can to help em(*) get better.

As it works out, I already know the person on probation.  I’ve known this person for as long as I’ve been working in this town, in fact– and I’ve thought this person was basically incompetent and useless for most of that time.  I was not surprised to find out that xe’s(*) up for probation.

Here’s the thing, though:  my job is going to be to help this person get better.  I considered suggesting that I be moved to a team with a person that I don’t know (and, note, this isn’t exactly a close relationship– I’m pretty sure this person does not know my name; only the aggravation factor has fixed hirs(*) in my head) and rejected the idea after discussing it with the rest of my team; the simple fact is that the corporation isn’t that damn big and that we can’t really keep the groups “teachers who have similar jobs and work with the same population of kids” and “teachers who know each other” apart if we want to have any sort of functioning peer-assistance training going on.

I am pretty certain that I’m capable of helping someone I don’t like very much be better at their job; if we’re willing to consider “student” a job that basically describes half of my first and second hour class, so this isn’t something I can’t do.  What I have to work on is the prejudging factor:  I’ve said the words “I can’t believe Alex is a teacher” on more than one occasion (Alex is not zir(*) name, obviously) and I need to walk into these observations believing zhim(*) to be redeemable.   

We’ll see how it goes.

(*) Did a quick Google search for gender-neutral pronouns and my brain broke.  Started choosing them at random when I needed them.