From The Past: January 8, 2004

At Ashley’s school they have a program called Accelerated Reading or AR for short. In this program you read a book and then get on the computer and answer questions about that book to earn points. You can read as much or as little as you want; the choice is yours. There have been many times when Ashley has finished a book and then gone to school the next day to take the test only to find that the computers are down. This is frustrating to both her and me because we are both worried that she will forget the information.

Cut to this morning: They changed the lunch menu to corn dogs and Ashley doesn’t like corn dogs so she called and asked if I would bring her a lunch. I said yes and showed up at the school fifteen minutes later. When I walked in the office to sign in, it just so happened that the computer teacher was sitting at the front desk. I started talking to her about the AR program. I was wondering if the tests could be taken online at home when the computers were down at school. She told me that they couldn’t because it was an in-school computer program. All was fine until Mrs. Principal walked out of her office and butted into our conversation. Let me describe Mrs. Principal for you. She’s tall with very erect shoulders, she seems to wear no make-up, and Lord forbid she smile or even pretend to actually like you. If you’ve ever read the book Flowers in the Attic, she would be THE GRANDMOTHER. The computer teacher and I continued to talk about the computers sometimes being down or out of commission. Mrs. Principal didn’t like this at all. She all but called me a liar and said, “The teachers panic when their computers aren’t working and they report it to us so there must be something else going on here.” I told her that even my fourteen-year-old son had been in when the computers were down and she just wouldn’t believe me. I was livid to say the least!

When I went down to Ashley’s room, I informed her teacher that I was all but called a liar. She told me that she doesn’t always report when her computer is down, but that it did go down often. She said that she was surprised that Mrs. Principal would act like that though.

I’m not surprised at all. She always acts as if there’s a stick up her butt as do most of the office workers there. There is one lady that’s nice, but the rest are as mean as rattlesnakes. I don’t know how they got jobs working around parents and children.