In what world is this okay?

I got to school at 6am on Wednesday, per usual, and went to my mailbox. In it was a memo from the principal's secretary to me saying "Please schedule a meeting with Mr. Principal on Wednesday. You may bring representation to the meeting."

I freaked. First, I went to Mrs. D, one of my two closest confidantes at school (along with Mrs. CowCulus), because she's always in that early, and she's been teaching for 33 years. I was hoping she'd say something to the effect that this is the standard letter they send when you have to sign your contract, or whatever.

She freaked. In the process of saying this sounded very bad, she also managed to say a number of very nice things about me vis-a-vis my teaching. In addition, she asked if any of the other teachers had similar notes in their boxes. It hadn't dawned on me to look, so I went back up and checked. Sure enough, 4 or 5 other teachers had notes. Unfortunately, of the ones I knew, they were teachers who I've heard less than stellar reports on.

So I continued to freak. I wandered around the office for a few minutes trying to figure out what to do next, when the principal's secretary came in, went to her office and immediately shut her door. Undeterred, I knocked and entered. I asked her what this was about. She seemed very apologetic and said it was about lesson plans. She said there were 12 people on the list, and they all got the same note. (One of the assistant principals had checked people's lesson plans the previous day, and mine was hand-written and frankly not terribly thorough. Nonetheless, it was done, which is the only requirement I know of -- if they want it done well, they should probably do some training, since we've been given three different lesson plan formats since the beginning of the year and no explanation of what they want on any of them... but that's another story.)

So now I'm not freaking out anymore, but I'm starting to get irritated. I should bring representation to a meeting about substandard lesson plans? (At this point it hadn't dawned on me that they probably meant union representation rather than legal, but still... representation for lesson plan malfeasance?) After getting back to my room, I called the principal's secretary and said I wanted to schedule the meeting, to which she replied that I should just try to catch him when he's free and talk to him then. Now I'm getting really irritated. "No," I said, "he asked me to schedule a meeting and to bring representation. That's not a 'catch him in the hallway' kind of meeting. Also, when he asks me to schedule a meeting, I'm not going to hang around hoping to catch him. Schedule a meeting."

We set it for 12:30. Fifteen minutes later she calls me back to tell me that she's spoken with him and let him know that people are very upset about the note. (Apparently, one of the teachers began crying, and another turned around to leave school, feeling she would be unable to teach that day, until she learned what it was about.) The principal then told her that the people with hand-written plans shouldn't have been on the list, so I don't have to meet with him after all.

Now I'm livid. You send me a note like that and it turns out it's a MISTAKE? The only reasonable interpretation of that note is that I'm about to be fired, and it's all just a big mistake? Oops, sorry.

Turns out I'm not the only one unhappy -- this example of "bull in the china shop" leadership has been the talk of the school for the last couple of days. Despite that, I've heard no apology or explanation from the principal. As Mrs. CowCulus said, every one of the teachers was behind him 100% at the start, feeling he could turn around the school and make us all proud to be a part of it... but he's losing people fast, and has already lost a lot of them with his "fire, ready, aim" style and his insistence on a dozen different things being highest priority (a tale for another day).

On the personal front, other than expressing my displeasure to another teacher who I know speaks with him regularly about what's going on, I haven't confronted him or anyone else about the note, and don't plan to. There just doesn't seem to be any personal gain to be had in the confrontation, and I'm trying to avoid getting involved in fights against some larger injustice that might be psychically rewarding but personally costly.