Okay, I am not really angry angry, but I do think she needs to improve her pacing of communication.

She is a diligent and conscientious lady who doesn’t mind sacrificing her sleep to get things done. Thus, I have tremendous respect for her. However, I think she releases her expectations a bit too belatedly for my liking. This is my Achilles’ heel, because I typically plan my work beforehand and don’t relish working last minute.

Today, my point of contention was with the Unit workbook that my colleagues and I needed to enhance before the start of a new school year in 2025. Many weeks ago, I had already systematically listed down all the gaps that I felt were missing in this year’s edition, which warranted our attention. I suggested that we needed to incorporate explanatory handouts and practice exercises into the current workbook.

She responded to my suggestions by giving her inputs. I thought I could focus on realising my ideas.

Last week, my colleague asked me for a meeting because she wanted to include some new things in the workbook. So, being collaborative, I brainstormed ideas with her for an hour. I felt that I managed to synergise my ideas with hers; collectively, we were to come up with a workbook that is pedagogically sound and thoughtfully curated for our students. Amidst the changes was a consolidated spelling list of 40 words, which would be divided into 8 words of 5 weeks’ work. My colleague would incorporate notes on short and long vowel sounds, as well as the schwa. We thought that such deliberate teaching of phonics would help our students retain these words in their long-term memory.

So, today, I had a meeting with my boss and colleague. I thought we could just relay our vision to her. But she felt that we should work on adapting the current reading comprehension passages and making them digestible, using the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level as our North Star. And not work on the Spelling list if we felt that we didn’t have time.

This triggered my frustration. Her request wasn’t unreasonable - if she had made known her intentions earlier. Like when I proposed my list of recommendations to be made to our current workbook. Why didn’t she mention her reservations about the difficulty level of the passages then?

To raise her concerns now and brush aside our desire to bring the Spelling List to fruition wasn’t an effective use of time. It involved cognitive switching costs because it forced me to have to add “adapting the comprehension passages” on my to-do list. I could no longer just focus on incorporating the suggested changes.

I don’t mind being managed. I just wish she could manage me ahead of deadlines and not drop last-minute bombshells.

Oh well.

Thanks for reading my rant.