to feel undermined by colleague

[boilerhouse2007]

I am a secondary school teacher, anyway there is this young colleague who is in the next room to me and yea she is lovely to the kids, something that just is not in my personality as much and this is a tough secondary school. Anyway, yesterday i was taking a troublesome girl down to my class for detention when the girl started walking and half ignoring me. I told her to come back and colleague appears in front of the boss and uses her soft voice to get the girl back when i wanted to handle it myself. This was all in front of boss too who was in earshot and i was so angry at her interference as i have had words with this colleague before over her interference buut do not want any more conflict and i just felt she stepped in. What do you think?

It was a teacher you didn't generally see shouting either so it must have really annoyed him.

OP, you might explain subjects well but I think I’m getting an idea of why your students don’t listen to you. We’ve all had that teacher who responds by getting increasingly histrionic and it never actually gets pupils to calm down, just laugh.

Well I taught and I can gather two things straight away:

one, the kid complied with the other teacher to show you up

and

two, the other teacher was undermining you.

In my school the staff stood together and took no sh*t from kids who tried to split the staff up and we also laughed like drains at colleagues who said such things as, 'Well, he's NO trouble for ME.'

However, take plenty of no notice of parents who tell you to be lovely and friendly to their children. These parents have no idea how children behave in school when they are not around.

Otoh I do actually agree with you, OP; what she is doing is undermining you and it may well be she does it on purpose.

Otoh I am really, really put off by your complete unwillingness to accept that you should still be learning- and you're only in your 40s!And I'm not even the person who has to manage you! Surely your students must pick up on those vibes of "it's not my fault, guv, nothing I can do about it"; they were obvious from your very first post.

clearly you don't understand the profession if you think that, for a school to succeed every teacher must have their authority and staff must seen to be equal by the students, a divided school where kids only listen to some teachers and pick and choose are schools that normally go into academic nosedive.
I really struggled to work out what you meant here - you seem to be struggling with punctuation. I really hope you don't teach English, or any subject involving writing sentences! I guess if you teach maths you may not need to punctuate properly, and not skip words.
...whatever you teach I'd urge you to get someone to proof read your reports before they go out - parents will expect proper sentences with a single, clear meaning.

Yes Tawdrylocal... It's exactly like that.
I'm a secondary school teacher; kids will say, 'I behave for Miss So-and-so because I like her' and they'll be hell on wheels for everybody else. Sometimes that person is me, sometimes it's somebody else.
As teachers we need to make students realize that they need to follow the rules, en of. Personalities shouldn't come into it. That takes a certain maturity that can take a while for students to acquire.
OP - You might be better off getting advice from TES or similar - many people on here will just shoot you down.
Good luck!

end of not en of

boilerhouse2007

I think that you need to step away from the thread, it is far from supporting and is clearly just winding you up more and more.

Poor grammar and punctuation. I hope you don’t teach in my local high school!

just seen the time and the date of the OPs last post, I think that you can stop baiting him now.

I´m a secondary school teacher and have been one for over 20 years, so I guess I've seen most of what can be seen in school life. It is undoubtedly true that it is easier to connect with pupils when you are young and fresh yourself. It is also true that sometimes you connect better with pupils and classes than others. All these people who say their teaching partner connects and has great relationships with all their pupils don't know what they are talking about. I bet their partners would say that x class is difficult, y class is great, z class is too quiet, etc. In teaching you are working with interpersonal relations on a grand scale and of course sometimes you are going to gel with a class better than others.

I suspect your young colleague is suffering from overeagerness and just wants to help. New young teachers often do really well in their first years and then think they are especially gifted teachers who know exactly what to do. It´s great that they are confident and that they have that connection with pupils, but what they don't yet have which older teachers have, is the perspective that being young and new is something that wears off. Ten-twenty years down the line, you need other things to fall back on in the classroom and being a teacher is a very different experience.

I suggest in your situation that you move on to a different school. I think in teaching it is important to get a fresh start in a new environment after some years. I think teachers go stale in the same environment. There is so much staffroom politics in teaching that it is necessary to get away from it after a while.

Unless the other teacher took over and decided on a different outcome then I don't see how she was undermining you. Did she not just tell the child to go back? That seems to me to be supporting you.

If a child ignored their mother and went to the MIL (as others have used as an example) and the MIL sided with the child/consoled the child/enforced a different discipline, that would be undermining. If the MIL told the child to go back and listen to their mum then that would be supportive.

I think you sound angry and you're trying to justify not addressing your approach to dealing with the kids by blaming this other teacher as somehow being undermining

OP don’t take it too personally. There’s a lot of advice given to you but unless we were there no one can really comment. OhCrepe mentioned earlier on that she/he has an EBD background. They gave you some good advice. If you work in the same classroom then I’m sure it was just a team teach method. If they are not then it may be quite interfering as they do not know the situation. At the moment I’m struggling with a lot of staff always interfering, ones who do not understand our current strategies for a group of particular children. But then on the other hand I sometimes welcome the help. But I will always ensure that it seems like it was an invitation and both staff make it very clear that we are working as a team.
I currently work with someone who has a soft calming voice, I generally do not have one. Most of the children relate to me a lot more than they relate to her. Mainly as I am more fair and treat them all equally (I hope that’s the reason). It also depends on the child’s trigger. Are you the reason the child is upset, possibly a different person to deal with the situation may have been best?
We can all speculate but unless we know exactly, and I mean exactly what happened then it’s hard to make a judgement.

OP if your attitude and thoughts in this thread are anything to go by, you could learn a thing or two from this other teacher. You were going to be shown up in front of your boss anyway, by the pupil ignoring you. So the other teacher saved you the job.

I’d be getting help with my classroom management skills. But to be honest, the way you’re talking suggests to me you need a new career.

And I fully agree with everyone else about the punctuation and grammar!

''I think you sound angry and you're trying to justify not addressing your approach to dealing with the kids by blaming this other teacher as somehow being undermining.''

Reading this thread with extreme shock[and amusement] at how people here turn this against the op. It appears that yes the op should not have posted this here as they are surrounded with people who have absolutely no idea of what life in a secondary school is actually like in 2018.

Having worked in many myself for too many years this is not unusual, let me assure you that just because the colleague has a way with the kids does not mean she is a better teacher or gets better grades. There is a big difference between controlling a class and having great authority over students and making a class do actual work and having expectations. The fact that the op said they were getting a kid down for detention makes me think he is there to discipline and work and has expectations and traditional values[that seem to have got lost in the new era]. Shockingly these teachers can get the hardest time in my experience.

Kids can be hard on teachers like this especially in tougher schools who have expectations and make their lessons as work based rather than entertainment[where little gets bloody learnt].On the other hand I have seen many ''lovely'' teachers the kids will love because that teacher does not push the kids or enforce sanctions and lavishes[bribes] the kids-particularly the worst ones.
The kids will not act up on this teacher as the teacher has no boundaries and causes no conflict with the kids as the teacher does not make them do actual work. The teacher is a friend and little learning goes on. I have seen this teacher many times in my career-we call them 'the mate', 'the girlfriend' or 'the aunt.'

Yet it amuses me here to sit and watch the mob blame the op as if the kids are angels.

Back in my days at secondary school long time ago. What you have as a teacher is needed today. Children have no respect. Seriously we all have to be fucking soft with our kids and others and they are walking all over us. As a parent (my children would not say boo to a goose) however if they were little shits id fully support you as a teacher to give them what for. No harm done to our generation and we pussy foot around issues in case it offends a label. I'd tell her next time she feels like interfering then you will step on her softly spoken patch. Why should you change. Ignore them on here putting you down because as a mother of a bullied child physically and mentally the schpolice din nothing and bullying is rewarded. No you be you and next time come down like a ton of bricks xx

What is her softly spoken patch?

I work in a school. First rule with behaviour is always check the adult is ok and needs help. I always everything ok Mrs so so and take their lead. Unfortunately there is usually one adult who thinks they can save the day

Stepmum x

user1484424013 Yes, I love how people here sit and criticise the op for being firm and not being softy softy. The same people will equally sit and complain how the justice system is too lenient today and criminals get away with everything when harsher sanctions should be put in place.

I too have seen many cases of bullying and the completely unacceptable get pushed aside in recent years by the overly soft approach employed across society today. The reason behaviour is worse today than 20 years ago in schools is because the softy approach and 'kids are not accountable for their actions' philosophy. When the corporal punishment was in when I was a kid or when teachers were allowed to raise their voice and were respected by parents, students did as they were told and behaviour issues were significantly less.

I am still waiting on any evidence that this softie softie pamper the child approach has any benefit. The same goes for our justice system and people wonder why there is a recruitment crisis in teaching today in the U.K?

The OP did themselves no favours by constructing a post full of grammatical error (which undermined their position as a teacher) and then disregarding any point of view from non teachers.

I don’t work in the teaching profession. I thoroughly admire and respect teachers. I believe that being firm and fair with kids works - you don’t necessarily need to shout to be firm. However my mum was a teacher and I have seen how teachers of a certain age are very set in their ways, always think they know best and aren’t prepared to consider doing things differently.

''I don’t work in the teaching profession. I thoroughly admire and respect teachers. I believe that being firm and fair with kids works - you don’t necessarily need to shout to be firm.''

But at no point did the op say they had done these things, that's why I laugh at the responses to these posts, everybody has made their assumptions of the type of teacher the op is or what actually happened. He simply stated he was not as gentle in conduct as a colleague-that cannot be helped. Every teacher will receive a different response even by saying or doing the exact same thing. That is simply the nature of the job. Thread appears more like a witch hunt as usual rather than actual discussion so I don't know why he bothered!

The OP is the type of teacher who doesn’t realise that typing a message full of grammatical error is going to raise eyebrows and undermine them. So possibly lacking in self awareness? Of course, they could be just incredibly stressed and typing badly in exasperation. I sympathise with that, but if you need support and understanding and for people to just nod and agree don’t post an AIBU.

On the offchance that op is real (unlikely) i just wanted to share that thinking someone is ‘naturally’ better or more talented or whatever can be unhelpful, as it closes one off from a mindset that seeks to improve professional practice and lifelong learning - this infographic is to do with misic, but applies ro all areas of life i think.

And there are a lot of flaws here - the first being that her manner is inherent and just who she is, rather than part of a strategy and something she works on, and the second being that being small and young and pretty and ‘soft’ don’t bring with them their own problems.