Irony

I had another stupid a problem earlier this week with the counselors at my school.

The proceedure for registering seventh graders for eighth grade full-year languages now requires teacher signatures, either from a student's language arts teacher or from the world language teacher (if the student has taken exploratory language). My problem? This change in proceedure was not communicated to teachers, but explained to students at a presentation. I was not the only teacher who found this new protocol surprising and confusing given that no dialog had occurred nor had any directive been publicly issued. Other teachers approached me to inquire as to what was going on. I am, after all, the department chairperson.

So, I presented my confusion and concern to the counselors. Wouldn't you know that their knee-jerk reaction to me was not to acknowledge me when I stated that this was an issue about lack of communication. Instead, they defended themselves by coming back at me with why I would question the practice of obtaining signatures. Don't you agree that it is in our best interests? they argued.

Am I missing something here? I thought counseling had something to do with listening to what people have to say.