Wednesday, May 20, 2009

What to do when people work against you.

I'm angry. This is the first time in a long time that I've ever felt like someone was activly working against me, or to prevent me from being successful. I'm sure that that isn't this person's purpose, but it is the result.

Several weeks ago I inquired from my cooperating teacher as to the availability of video cameras for taping myself teach. She told me that all I needed to do was go talk to the librarian, check one out, no big deal. So I pushed the topic to the back of my mind. Time flew by, and before I knew it I was (am!) nearly done with my unit for my Unit Assessment Report. Here is my big mistake, I waited (accidentally) for the last minute to talk to the librarian about signing out a camera. Perhaps I didn't understand how things worked, or who the cameras belong to, but she was taken aback and put out by my request, and acquiesced because she trusts my cooperating teacher. I was allowed to video tape my lesson upon the agreement that I would return the camera before her class the next day, and I would delete my video from the card. Since this is my third term dealing with this, I figured no problem.

Well, I've tried everything I could do in order to make that clip come off the camera and I can't figure out how to do it. None of the things that have worked before worked, so I did the logical thing and asked the Librarian if she could help me out. Her response when I told her it wasn't working? "I know, I can't manage that for you". But I just need a little bit of direction.. "I can't manage that..."

The way I'm hearing that it almost sounds like she knew I (and the other student teacher using the camera) would have trouble down loading our video, but she gave us the camera anyways, and didn't forewarn us about the potential problem.

I went to the tech guy at the school and he and I spent about 15 minutes messing with the camera and my computer trying to get it to read the files, and it wouldn't work. I'm afraid to go back and ask the librarian again because I don't want her to be angry with me, but I'm at a loss of what to do. I suppose I might just loose the film and have to do it again. The other student teacher is trying to get the files off this afternoon, so hopefully she can figure it out and fill me in.

However the really concerning thing is the fact that I feel like this other teacher is working against me, particularly trying to make this a difficult process for me because she's offended that I assumed I could check out the cameras for this purpose. How do I deal with this? Is this an issue/conflict that comes up a lot in schools? I expected more professionalism. It's possible that she is just exceedingly busy and doesn't mean to come across this way, but either way the interpersonal skills could use a little work.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Well i'm not really experienced in these things since i'm just 18,
yet there are reasons :

-> Popularity
-> Insecurity
-> Jealousy
-> Temporary anxiety

and maybe many more

If the instances are numerous it may rather be a permanent reason.

One way to counter that is possibly helping out the other person anyway you can, and being as friendly as possible despite all resistances.

If the situation turns aggressive you can just skip the place for the time being and avoid that person peacefully for some time.