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?

''I believe that being firm and fair with kids works - you don’t necessarily need to shout to be firm.''

Also while I too used to believe in this, this approach can and does fail in a tough school. Many of the recommended approaches can, whilst not wanting to appear condescending I think people should be careful in giving advice or criticising here unless they have worked in such environments. Disciplining and dealing with kids as a parent and in the school environment are 2 very different kettle of fish.

I am debating and adding to this thread as I know from experience where the op stands and the crazy politics staff face in your typical tough comprehensive these days. Likewise, I would not be commenting on threads where a nurse is talking about hospital/surgery politics as I have no experience of such matters. I reckon this thread has reminded me of why teaching is such a tough job.
It is because it is the 1 profession in which everybody deludes themselves into thinking they understand or have the answers for x and y situation because everybody went to school at one stage!

I think you nees to atep back from the situation. You aee collegues as undermining you instead of working as a team tonaupport each other. If teachers in a scho show the pupils a consistant approach whereby the step in to back each other up the pupuls learn that certain behaviours will not work.
This child that leaves often, why does she do it? What is she getting out of it? What are the triggers? If, as you say you make her ruturn through a threat every time she never succeeds so what is her motivation?
Until you see the pupil as a person with a reason for her behaviour, you will not be auccessful in building strong enough relationships to have a mutually respectful experience. Why does the threat work? When you phone mum doea mum punish her, smack her, withhold food etc. Why is this threat powerful enough to stop her.
Speak to your collegue, team teach and observe other teachers and how they manage behaviours. Times are a changing in our profession we are more aware of aces and the impact that they have on our pupils. We are also more aware that the language we use to describe behaviours colours our and the pupils opinions of themselves.
Sometimes the hardest thing in teaching is to admit you don't know it all and don't have all the answers. It is not a job we can do alone, nor is it a job where we can stagnate and stop reflecting and learning. Children know when we threaten that phonecall home it's our last throw of the dice. What do we do after that? Oh and i am Scottish and i can change and adapt the pitch, tone, pace and softness of my voice as can all my collegues.
Op- you sound near breaking point. Please accept support from your collegues before you break and you and your pupils suffer.

Boywiththebrokensmile....funny that you use my post as your example of people that don't know what is like in secondary schools. Any idea what I do for a living?

''Speak to your collegue, team teach and observe other teachers and how they manage behaviours.''

Problems with all these though- team teaching can undermine. Students will see the weaker colleagues as needing help and weak. I have seen this many times and why as a mentor I avoid it as the struggling teacher can lose respect.

Observations too are overrated in that students will react differently to who is in front of them even if the teacher was saying and doing word for word identical things. Also observing other teachers is harder to pick up behaviour tips not only in the response, it is because the teachers told to observe are usually targeted teachers or those having issues.
They will be sent to colleagues who have little behaviour problems and who have more respect so they will not face the hurdles the struggling teacher is facing, thus the observation can be pointless as the struggling teacher will not see how x teacher handles the hurdle. Not trying to be difficult here, I am just saying that the job is a lot less strategy based than people think which is why I find mentoring so bloody hard!

There’s lots of resentment in you, OP, and quite a lot of inferiority complex towards your colleague - as you have repeatedly written, because she’s younger, pretty and gentle. Something you can’t be.

As a teacher, you should well know that it takes a lot more that softness and prettiness for kids to respect a teacher. True, maybe they are drawn to her because they have tough home lives and not enough affection there - so softness and gentleness can go a long way. You said yourself that your ultimate threat to the girl in question is calling her parents - sounds like her parents give her hell whenever you complain to them about her.

But on the other hand, if anything, youth and softness can make a teacher an easy target for tough kids. Your colleague has probably worked very hard to get this level of respect from the kids DESPITE her youth and softness. Maybe they know they can go to her for advice and emotional support with any problem they have? Maybe she shows them mutual respect and understanding? Maybe she took the time and trouble to get to know them really well? Maybe they know she’s strict but always fair? Maybe they know what she expects of them and what the boundaries are they must never cross? It really has nothing to do with looks and accent.

Why, instead of quietly simmering, don’t you talk to her about this incident, tell her how it made you feel, but also mention that you admire her way with the kids and how she got there? You’re on the same side after all, and sharing experience and the knowledge of your pupils can only help.

So stop moping about your looks and accent, OP. If it helps, one of the best and most respected teachers in literature was just like you: tough, strict, hardened, no-nonsense, with a thick Scottish accent - Professor McGonagall. But she was also impressively knowledgeable, she was always just and fair, and took the kids’ side when necessary. No kids messed with her.

Good luck to you and your kids!

Op have you observed effective team teaching taking place? I have team tought and worked within small teams in a classroom and we genuinley support each other. We rotate through all behavipurs to ensure that the pupils know that we work together and are all saying the same thing.

The pupils i work with have many distressed bahviours and i and my team have been hurt (sometimes badly) when supporting our kids. All behaviour is communication and when we remind ourselves of this we stop seeing them like a pack ready to pick off the weakest teachers. Instead we see them as individuals with needs that we can hopefully support them with.

I think you need to reflect on why you went into teaching, what do you want out of teaching and how do you plan on getting there. If you slt is not supportive or you genuinely are undermined by other staff tgere needs to be an open and frank discussion where you can all say your piece.

You talk of being a mentor but your posts sound like your own self esteem and self worth as a teacher have become eroded. You don't come across as hating anyone just unhappy. Would stopping the mentoring help with this? Although i work with a team and varios people in and out of my classroom daily i still get the oh no what have i done wrong feeling whenever the slt come into my room. I feel for you because our job is hard and when things are rocky it can feel impossible. Good luck sorting things i truely wuah you all the best. Now i must finish reports or i will be in trouble...

@boy - the op shouldn’t have posted on AIBU then if they only wanted feedback from teachers. However, let’s be clear, not all the teachers giving feedback here agree with you .

Also if this op is for real I’ll eat my hat. The Op has issues with basic grammar and sentence construction. I despair for the teaching profession if they’re part of it

I admire teachers they have a very difficult job to do today. The rules seem to change all the time, they are not allowed to be as firm as they were when I was a kid. We knew where we stood. It wasn't perfect but it seemed to work. Some teachers I couldn't stand, others I got along with, but I always knew not to step out of line because of the consequences. Thats not to say I didn't on occasion. I was a Prison Officer in a young offenders institution Cat A dodgy, but if I was having trouble with a particular inmate I would talk to him privately and try to find out why he was behaving towards me like that. You would be surprised how well that worked on most occasions and they would gain a new respect for you. I always explained my part and that I wasn't there to 'get at them' but I had a job to do. But I would always listen to their side of things to. Of course some Officers were better at handling things than others, and it can be useful to try and model them in certain circumstances. You have to be yourself, but you can change your methodagy, sometimes it works, others it doesn't. I was in an all male enviroment where my colleques were sometimes harder to manage than the inmates. Ha ha. I think it always comes down to respect in the end. Firm but Fair

@strongmummy I think you need to back off a little with the grammar. I think we have got the point. There could be reasons why OP’s SPAG isn’t the best. He may have always struggled in this subject, he may be a teacher specialising in a more hands on subject, for example, D&T, Art, PE. He may Have a learning difficulty like dyslexia. Your SPAG doesn’t have to be excellent to be a teacher. Your passion is the most important thing.

@squeezy , no sorry, that’s not correct and very patronising to PE and Art teachers!! When you teach you learn to construct sentences. I’ve conceded that perhaps the OP is stressed (totally get that) but if so AIBU is not the place for this conversation. However, I am more inclined to believe that the OP isn’t real due to the grammar.

Agree strong

I think sadly OP has lost his passion which is incredibly sad for him, for the school and most importantly for the children there.

I would just like to say that children have some sixth sense or body language reading or whatever skills - they KNOW if a teacher has a weakness. I don't mean 'oh she's soft I can get away with anything', not that kind of weakness. But the ones who are like the OP teacher sounds - rigid, suppressed anger - they see this; they don't respond well to it, it doesn't engage them, they don't feel they can relate.

What is very sad is when a teacher feels that they no longer have anything to learn and things going on around them are all someone else's fault and they can't possibly change anything in order to grow and improve. I'm 51 and currently pushing myself through a career and learning masses of new stuff along the way. I constantly assess myself, how am I doing, what can I improve. From the ages of 17 to 20 I was a teacher of a specialist sporting activity - I would regularly sit and watch other instructors teaching their classes in order to learn what words and phrases and ideas and lesson construction they used, how they dealt with problems and so on.

As I said and others have already said before, if you can only see it's others that are the problem and you have no genuine willingness to change and grow and learn, then you either remove yourself from teaching altogether or you go to an entirely different learning setting which can accommodate your possibly rigid and unchanging style - which may be perfectly good in a certain setting whilst just not working (in this case) in the setting of a challenging secondary school.

But don't sit and blame everyone and everything else and hope things will get better from doing that because they won't. Even if we had all completely sympathized with OP it wouldn't have got him anywhere and sadly his pretty blinkered mindset came across loud and clear and he got a lot of feedback that he wasn't expecting. Just because many who responded haven't taught as teachers in challenging secondary schools, we can still pick up the OPs attitude and mental stance and respond to that - which many did, with constructive and thoughtful ways to improve things. And OP, if he was real, has gone. I imagine if he posted on TES or similar he wouldn't get all approving responses on there either and clearly from his comments he felt the comments he was receiving were all substandard (except the ones who agreed with him).

I believe the colleague did undermine him but not intentionally so but as someone else just said, I'd want to find out what triggered her to do that and OP apparently wasn't willing to do that. Hardly setting the example for lifelong learning and an openness of attitude to life is it?!

@strongmummy I have to totally disagree. Although PE & Art teachers do need to use grammar etc, it’s minimalistic compared to an English teacher. A lot less marking for example. I am the perfect example. I currently teach, I am dyslexic. My spelling is not effected much but my grammar is POOR. During my degree I would be corrected on essays etc but I could not physically come to grasps with it. Also SPAG has become quite intense compared to the what I was taught in school. I always get everything proof read. We don’t need that for MN.

Your spelling and grammar might be slightly below par (you tell me it is) but you can string a coherent sentence together. You have clarity of thought.

I'm applying to do a PGCE in September and one lesson I'm taking forward is how my (usually calm) DH appears when he gets really cross and shouts.

It makes him look a) vulnerable and b) a bit ridiculous, and our DC tend to ignore him when he gets past this point!

@squeezy, read the OP’s posts. They are no way comparable to the way you write. Your sentences are coherent for a start!!! I’m no SPAG Nazi and I make plenty of mistakes myself, but the teachers I know (and I know a lot as my mum is a teacher) would not write like the OP. MN isn’t a formal place, no, but there’s informal English and then there’s just shit English. The OP’s English is in the latter camp which makes me doubt that this is a real OP. If it is, the OP needs to get some self awareness.

@boilerhouse2007

"The reason I asked about not enjoying the job was I was in that position myself. Awful school... poor behaviour and shocking management. I was sitting letting the kids do what they liked as nothing ever got done about it all. I finally had enough when a pupil used sexual gesture and language to me and slt didn't take it seriously. Moved schools and I'm now loving my job again. I engage with the kids... even just having a chat which I had lost at the old place.
It might be time for a change of school and a fresh start?"

I know you responded to the above post already, but I think it may be the answer. I really sympathise with you - it sounds like the stress is putting you on a knife-edge. Can you perhaps start applying to other schools towards the tail-end of the summer holidays, when you're more rested and relaxed?

Strongmummy ''However, let’s be clear, not all the teachers giving feedback here agree with you .''

I am not asking everybody to agree with me. Having taught and moved into mentoring for years I am just talking about the hard truths of teaching I have seen. I spent the 1st 12 years of my career in good secondary schools and with little behaviour problems.

In my arrogance, I believed I was great at behaviour mgmt and believed like many people on this thread that behaviour problems could be solved by doing x, y and z. I had mates in the profession who left or had breakdowns over the behaviour and I secretly blamed them. Then after moving area, I started working in tough comprehensives and there I observed that many of the behaviour strategies I had previously used and had been advised to me could and did fail. I had classes I had little control over no matter how many different strategies I tried and classes I excelled with. Many different reasons for this. For eg sometimes it was just a good hod or a hoy who was firm with behaviour that helped, other times it was a bad hoy or hod who resulted in bad behaviour as I had no support. And support in a school particularly with bad classes can make or break you.

I began to understand then over the next several years after working in tougher schools that schools could have the reputation as 'tough' because it was another way to say a school is badly managed. Staff would ultimately be blamed when infact it was because there was no behaviour policy.
If schools are overly lenient students will inevitably misbehave-not necessarily with everybody but with some staff and these struggling staff can do every strategy under the sun and still fail. All it takes is 1 or 2 ringleaders to turn on a staff member and they can do a lot of damage.
As a mentor, I have heard all the excuses for this-poor lessons, poor relationships, not marking, lack of positivity,wrong personality, not doing x, y or z.... Yet the hard truth is really that sometimes if a student or a class want a teacher to fail they can do it, as yes even students [believe it or not] can be just not very nice people sometimes. All it takes is a few to turn a good teacher out of a school.

@boy, thank you for explaining and I do get it. As I say, my mum’s a teacher and so I grew up listening to the issues she faced and I’m definitely not naive enough to think kids can’t be arseholes!!

Strongmummy

Yes but I am only clarifying that as a lot of people on the thread immediately assume the op is doing something wrong and that it begins with him or that he needs to do what his colleague does. Nowhere can I find where he said he shouted or was inappropriately hostile to the students yet people automatically assume this and are so quick to point the finger of blame. I see this in my school and other schools I support in also. Society now appear to think a child is blameless at all times.
That appears to be the new wave of thought in the modern day-it is the teacher's fault and that simply is rubbish in my professional opinion and years of experience. It simply baffles me here that posters seem to ignore the fact that sometimes no it is entirely the pupils at fault. Building relationships and respect is a 2 way street and students have to meet the teacher half way too.
Also 'building relationships' in a badly run school can be a euphemism for trying to win the kid over and do not try to control them or enforce rules. Strategies can and do work, I am not dismissing them but they are only tools- there is by no means any guarantee a student will respond to them and that cannot be put back on a teacher.