Who's The Boss?

Did you happen to tune into Undercover Boss, the reality show that debuted after the Super Bowl?

It's a simple concept: the head honcho of a major cooperation goes undercover in his own company to get a better understanding of the ramifications of his top-down edicts and policies.

This episode followed the President and COO of Waste Management, who during his seven days undercover, witnessed first hand how the words he writes, emails, and speaks in the name of increasing worker productivity morph into the harsh realities of his workers' daily experience.  

Not only was he surprised to learn that one supervisor in his company penalizes workers two minutes of pay for each minute late, he was shocked to discover that female drivers pressured to stay on schedule are reduced to using jars as makeshift bathrooms along the route. Spurred by this knowledge, he vowed to change policies that aren't working and in the future, to carefully weigh the pros of increased revenue against the cons its toll takes on his workers. 

Like Atticus said, "You never really know a man until you understand things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it".

It's not surprising that many bosses and supervisors appear to have little to no understanding of how their decisions impact their workers.  Memories of life at the lower level are often lost in the transition from worker to supervisor - I think someone slips something in the champagne at the induction ceremony... or the indoctrination ceremony, in some cases.

It's frustrating when other peoples' choices make our jobs harder.  Each time someone at the top makes a decision that adds to but does not benefit our workload, worker productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness severely decline.  Which is why if we were the boss, we would, of course, make better decisions, right?

I'm not so sure.

As a teacher, I work in an environment surrounded by people who, at times, make careless decisions that negatively affect their workers and I'm not talking about administrators.  I'm talking about teachers.

Teachers control a large population of workers.  Yes, teachers are controlled by administrators' decisions - I won't argue that - but realistically, once in the classroom behind closed doors (or in my case, with the door wide open), a teacher has supreme control of what happens in that classroom: a teacher controls the environment that his or her students work in and I'm surprised by how many teachers abuse that control.

Teachers possess the power of creation: they can offer students a welcoming place to learn or they can make their classroom a place no one wants to be - including the teacher.

I firmly believe that most reluctant learners fail not because the system has failed them, but because the adults in the building failed to recognize that learner as a human first and as a student, second.  Most students who fail were, or continue to be, mistreated, ridiculed, looked down upon, or dismissed by teachers who could have been, instead, nice and compassionate.

In fifteen years of teaching, I have failed only one student and that's because he missed over 80 days of school and withdrew, forcing me to sign off on him as having "Withdrawn/Failed" (I tried to give him an incomplete but was told that was not an option).  The reason the scores of other "reluctant learners" managed to achieve a relative level of success in my classroom after having failed other classes miserably isn't because I'm such a great English teacher.

It's simply because I care about them more as people than as numbers and I took the time to get to know them.

When I create lesson plans and assignments, I can get carried away.  That's when I have to remind myself that those kids are my captive audience 200 minutes a week, which is way more time than most of them spend with their families in a month.  Then, I fashion my lessons to make the most of those minutes, knowing that when the bell rings, that student must proceed to another class and what happens in that other classroom is beyond my control; therefore I can't expect my students to focus on my class when they are not in it.  

If I can't teach what my students need to learn in 50 minutes a day, 180 days a year, then shame on me.  That's why I refuse to give them meaningless assignments that are only going to take up their time, increase their frustration and diminish their future productivity.  


I wish more teachers would take that into consideration when assigning work for the sake of assigning.


When we're in charge of others, we have an obligation to put their well being before our own - no matter if we're in the role of a boss, supervisor, teacher, or parent.


It's good for morale and when morale is high, productivity soars.