Being Nice

One shouldn't get the wrong impression about the school I work for. Sometimes, most of the time, they are nice. Otherwise I would have taken up the various offers I've gotten over the years to work somewhere else.

Yesterday, for example, a meeting was called about one of the classes. For three reasons, I said I wouldn't be there:

• It's my day off, and the logistics are difficult
• It's my day off, and I had plans to see my parents and then a meeting of the women in my synagogue, and then, I found out only yesterday that I'd be going to, a "Seudat Brachot/Amen."
• As part of the teachers strike, which unfortunately our school still isn't obeying, the least I can do is to refuse to attend anything more than actual teaching. That means no staff meetings.

So, in the afternoon, traveling in a cab with my parents back to their hotel, after going to the kotel and then shopping and schlepping and late lunching in downtown Jerusalem, I got a call from the afternoon secretary asking me to give her a report about the students. I asked her to call me back in a few minutes, since I couldn't do it in the cab. She did, and I found it much more efficient and pleasant to just give her an oral report, which she transcribed, than attending a meeting.

Now, there's lots to do here before Shabbat.