Paranoia

So I was sitting in my classroom today during my prep hour, getting ready for my next class to come in, and the phone rang. On the caller id I saw that it was our building secretary. I picked up the phone, said hello, and our secretary said the following, "Kevin, Joe needs you to stop by his office before you leave school today." So I told her that I would be sure to do it, and I hung up the phone.

Now before I go any further, I want to let you know that Joe is the head principal at my school. So, just like the students, I got worried about the prospect of being "called to the office." Now I do my job, and I think I do it well, but one can never be sure.

The only other time in my teaching career that I have ever been called to the office is when I was a middle school teacher. The assistant principal called me down, and I was nervous then too. I remember entering his office and seeing one of our assistant superintendents already seated in his office...and that's never a good sign.

They had bad news for me. They told me that the school district was cutting middle school business the following year, but they were going to transfer me to the high school. In hindsight, this was a great thing to happen to me, but I digress.

So after I hung up the phone, the wheels in my brain started turning at a frenetic pace. I started taking a mental inventory of everything that I had done, or negelected to do, in my recent past. Fortunately, I wasn't able to think of anything big, but I was still left wondering.

At that exact moment, my 5th hour students started streaming in. I wasn't really in a mood to deal with a class, but I put my "game-face" on, and I got them started on their warm-up activity. Fortunately 5th hour is a good class, so they got to work right away.

I opened up the adjoining door that I share with another teacher, and I went into her empty classroom for a second. I told her about my impending visit to Joe, and she replied that it was probably nothing. I agreed with her, but those were just words. In reality, I was nervous and paranoid.

At school we have a 7-period day, and each teacher teaches five classes. My two hours off each day are 3rd and 4th. We normally have meetings that fill up one of those two hours, and then we have an hour to ourselves. With that being said, one of the things that frustrated me most about the call, is that it had arrived at the end of my two hours of prep time! I was going to have to wait until the end of the day to find out what Joe wanted.

But, I knew that I couldn't wait until the end of the day. So I planned to go visit him during my lunch break, after my 5th hour class. So, after dismissing my 5th hour class, I made a beeline for the main office. The whole time that I was rolling to the office, I was still racking my brain to try to figure out what the principal wanted.

Well to make a long story short, I went into his office, and he closed the door behind me. That only made the worry and panic set in even more. But thankfully I soon realized that my last hour of worry had all been in vain.

He asked me if I would be willing to serve on a district-wide committee about our attendance policy. I was pleasantly surprised that he was asking me to serve on this committee. Because, in my mind, that actually meant that he thought I was doing a good job, and I was very happy about that.

The meeting with Joe took about three minutes. It probably took longer than that for me to roll back to my classroom after the meeting. On the way back, I was thinking to myself about how silly it had been for me to get that worried about the meeting.

When I got back to my classroom, I told my coworker about my meeting. She's just laughed, because she had been right all along. I laughed too, and then I finally took a deep breath.