Custodians

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Custodians
By Michelle

Most of the time, this has not been an issue for me. Like most of the other posters, I have had a good relationship with the custodians and there have been no problems. This year, I was at a new school. For the beginning
of the year everything was great. In March, I was sick (at school working but not feeling well), one of my two aides was out 18 of 20 straight school days, two of the kids got sick and started having behavior problems, and they couldn't find subs for the aides. It was a really rough month. One of the kids became physically aggressive and I had to do physical restraint 30-90 minutes

almost every day. Despite the fact that we had been on friendly terms and that I had even been approached by the principal on two different occasions and had given the custodians high praise both times, they got mad because my room wasn't as clean as usual. I'm sure there was more to it than that, but it blew up into a huge problem. One of them actually came into my room and started screaming at me in front of the children. The principal banned her from my room until well after the children were gone each day.

I know this was part of an overall problem - They stopped doing a good job of cleaning the rooms; They would wait until the principal was gone and plug up a tv and watch videos of soap operas; They went to the principal complaining about teachers constantly. In the end, the principal put her foot down and their performance improved considerably but the atmosphere is definitely chilly around there!

I would encourage you to find a way to deal with it as nicely as possible. Is the problem frequent enough and severe enough to ruin a relationship? Could you make that the time you step out to copy papers or take a quick break? Could you put on headphones? Really think through the implications before you take any action. You may have to live with the results a long time.