Am I Too Bad?

These all were what I said and asked in a teachers’ meeting of our school management. The background was our principal’s commitment. Almost all teachers and students said that he didn’t have a good commitment to run management of our school. As I wrote in ‘Does He Hide Something?’, he had left some good programs of our school which had been our icons since the school built, and it affected most of us.

Soon the meeting was being ‘hot’ in the real meaning of hot. We felt that we’re sitting on the fire. He acted as he didn’t know something and kept running his long explanation but it really explained nothing. Soon later the meeting began a war field where the principal wanted international teachers (five teachers) would be paid as much as regular teachers but he asked the five teachers to do three-four times harder of job than other regular teachers for the school’s sake. But students of the international classes have to pay double tuition because they’re studying in international classes. Everyone knows that an international class isn’t cheap to run on! He reported for the monitoring team that the international students had to pay much because the spent money was used for paying international teachers as the teachers had been paid double than regular ones. It’s not fair at all, of course! I and four other teachers who teach Cambridge curriculum for international classes were thinking that we’re throwing into a hot fire. But I think the principal won’t know what others want from him if nobody will explain it all to him. So I did!

"Thanks for giving me a chance.
As you and all have known about me so well, I won’t blame you behind but I’ll tell you my thoughts and even it’s a bitter one to say I’ll say. Since I took my seat and heard what you said, I think there’s no any explanation from you, though you had spoken too long and too much but you didn’t answer one question yet. So I think I need to use the straight words to make you clear and I hope that I and we all here will get a good answer from you later. We do need an explanation to answer parents' questions about our programs.

You always used international class to ask parents of international students pay more. You presented how good international teachers we had in this school and for that reason, parents didn’t mind to double tuition of their kids. And you always said to their parents that the school doubled salary of international teachers. I had discussed with other four teachers and as I’m a home teacher of XI grade of the international class I’ll run the following statements and questions and they’re our statements and questions, not mine.

We five don’t mind not to be paid double or if the school has no enough money to pay us, we’d love being volunteers for the students and this country. But the school and you as the top leader of the school asked parents to pay more than any parents of regular students. And the problem then is you explained parents why they had to pay more. The only reason is because this school has to pay more international teachers. We five don’t mind not to be paid more if students don’t pay more. We five don’t mind you pay us as much as other regular teachers but you don’t ask our international students to pay more than regular students. If they pay more we get more. If they pay more but you pay us as much as other regular teachers, you can’t ask five of us to give more than others. We will give what others give for the school if you value us in salary as much as others in the case the international students have to pay more.

And I wanna tell you all about another one. Students said that I’m a very good mask for you because I’m always ready to fight for you when students try to take you down. But now I have a big question for myself if I have done a right way for students and their parents? Do I have to think once again if the one I’m ready to fight for is a real good one to fight for? Because if we try to be honest for ourselves, we will see that we had run this school by a wrong way. Why do I say so? Because so many good programs are in memoriam today!

Didn’t you ever hear when you’re going around that people out there said many bad things about our school? We’re running an excellent school in this province, we’re running a prestigious school for people in South Sumatera, we’re running one of the best national school in this country, but what we have today? Will we let this excellent school just to be a good memory of people’s mind?

I have a good statement taken from my daddy’s word and I’ll share it for you all here as I’ve kept the word to take my life way. Hope it will be also a good one for you all. My daddy said that if you do something wrong, I'm gonna kick your ass not because I hate you but because of my love for you.
And you know, Sir, it’s what I’m doing for you now in this meeting.

I sufficiently know that my words weren’t nice enough to be listened to, but I hope your main tree is same with mine and you can understand why I do this all for you. Thank you."

I needed more than 10 minutes to blow the all words out of my head. When I was saying those all, everybody said nothing and just listened to me. Almost all teachers then said that I told the audience what they wanna say but they couldn’t say those all because they didn’t know how to say, they didn’t know which words they should choose.

Can you suggest me something why the principal still couldn’t give us the answer after I explained him and audience by those all blunt words? Is he too slow-witted to understand?

(You can read more here…)