A friend told me this past week that everyone knows where his/her line is drawn. A person will accept anything that goes up to that line but will not cross it. This line could represent a person's conscience, but for the sake of this post, I propose that it could also be my personal lie detector, an internal radar that pings quicker and louder the closer I draw to the moment of no return. A bald-faced lie, told intentionally, crosses my line, but partial truths, well, they just walk right up to it.
My second year teaching, I was in a new school teaching Spanish out of field. (Bet you didn't know that tid-bit about me.) Not only was I dealing with a subject I had little experience teaching--none, actually--but I was also a nearly new teacher still learning how to manage a classroom full of teen angst and hormones. I was like a program car on the used car lot, used with low mileage.
I was called into the principal's office one day to explain how I was assigning grades to students. A parent of one of my students complained about me because her daughter did not have an A in my class. The daughter had a high C, and I definitely remember that correctly. Therefore, I was in the wrong somehow/somewhere in how I was grading my students. Aside: I later found out from a colleague that this same young lady could not get the new car her dad had promised because she did not have all A's.
Collaboration was not expected then, but because I was so new to the subject area, I leaned heavily upon the experience of the second Spanish teacher at my school. She was wonderful. Miss Sproul always took time to answer my questions, help me with lesson planning, talk with me about pacing, and even discuss grading. I was trying to follow Miss Sproul's pacing lead but was caught at the end of a nine weeks one test grade short. I don't remember all of the details of what I had done, but essentially I counted a test grade twice--for all students--and that was the only detail that the parent could get the principal to put his finger on and tell me to change.
The principal questioned me about my grading. I was still new enough to feel apprehensive about being called into the principal's office, and I found myself being extremely careful about what I said. In the process of answering his questions, I carefully weighed what I was saying to make sure I wasn't implicating myself somehow or placing myself in a bad light. My instinct was to cover my butt. As he asked me questions, I felt my internal lie detector begin to ping. I hated being questioned. I so wanted to give an answer that would remove me quickly from the principal's office, even if it meant not telling the truth. I remember him asking me about the test and how I weighted it. I wanted to lie and say that it was not true, that I did not weight the test. I wanted to be out of that chair and out from under his gaze. I remember not fully answering, or not being completely open when answering, the principal's questions out of fear that some reprisal would occur because of my unknowing wrongdoing.
I could tell my lie detector was active and pinging, but not at a pace where I would cross my personal line. There are moments you instantly remember from your first years of teaching, and this is one I will not forget. This incident does not sound very distressing except for the fact that I knew I was approaching my own personal line of dishonesty, and I wanted to do it to save myself.
By the way, when I went back and reaveraged all of the grades for my classes minus the test grade, all of my students' grades went down several points with the exception of two students who actually gained one or two points on their averages. I did approach my principal and ask him if I should adjust the grades of the majority of my students downward once I removed the extra test grade--of course I knew he would say no. That was just a matter of numbers--I really wanted to show him I did not do anything to the detriment of any of my students but had in fact actually inflated their grades several points by my "error" in grading. I made sure I notified the mother that her daughter's grade was actually lower than what I had given her on her report card.
Fifteen years later, I reflect back on that encounter between a parent, a teacher, and an administrator, and I know it really wasn't a personal lie detector that caused that feeling of uncertainty, inadequacy, and insecurity. It was a combination of a couple of things: 1) being a new teacher who did not know her way around the principal's office and 2) the surprise attack by two people who had power over me--a parent who happened to be a veteran teacher and did know her way around the power structure within a school, and the principal, the symbol of authority (in my eyes at that time) within the school.
When I was a child, students who were called to the principal's office were in big trouble. My psyche holds on to that; it affected me then much more than it affects me now, but that unease at being asked to see the principal is always with me. Even today, when the school secretary called my room and told me the principal wanted to talk with me after school, I fought back a ping in my stomach, even though I knew his request was most likely innocuous. Today, he only wanted me to meet a pre-service teacher because he wanted her to observe my classroom.
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