1. I made a really excellent sweet egg bread on Thursday and then, this morning, I made the last of it into french toast. Elinor's first taste of french toast and my first time making it. The egg bread was cut into before I could take a picture of it, but it was pretty gorgeous. I did an 8-strand braid.
2. Last night I received an actual complaint about the lesson I taught. Things I felt upon receiving the email (indirectly, submitted to the website and thus my boss, rather than to my email, which seemed rude and cowardly): sucker punched. annoyed. horrible. sick.
The complaint was: "Unfortunately -- way too much time was spent on "work"....how he needs to take this off, unbuckle this, clean this, put this back, hang this here, do this that way -- that he lost interest. He is 7 years old (!) and was looking forward to enjoying himself. I feel badly because its an opportunity lost for my son." Here's the thing. No exaggeration, I had him WATCH me untack and put things away and then brush the pony. The exclamation point after the "7 years old" is especially infuriating because when I was 7, getting to brush a pony would have been the highlight of my week. It still kind of is. Then we put the pony away and I told him to tell her "thank you" (I always instruct my students to say thank you to the pony when they put them away).
Fortunately my boss tried to explain that our philosophy is that part of the whole experience is learning the "work" as well and that, although it is actually much easier to just get the pony ready and throw the kid on, then send them home and do the untacking ourselves, we choose to do it this way because we feel it is important.
So, while I do not feel that I did anything wrong, nor do I feel that I would do things differently, nor should I and I also know that if she took her son anywhere else, he would have the same experience, I can't help feeling truly gutted and am full of self-loathing. I actually went to bed early last night because of it and had to have a good cry about it again today.
3 comments:
:(
It's your job to teach 7 year olds how to ride and care for horses. It's not your job to meet soccer moms' unrealistic expectations, or help them pass on their own indolence to their children.
I know what you mean about feeling gutted and being full of self-loathing, even though you did the right thing. I've been there before. But you *did* do the right thing, and you're fortunate enough to have a boss who backed you up all the way.
Don't let one foolish, overly indulgent parent wreck you. You're better than that.
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