"Support" staff

[divadee]

I am "support" staff in a school. Some of us have been campaigning to change this to "associate" staff. Teaching staff are a bit twatish where I am and it is very much a them and us culture for about 85% of the teaching staff.

We have said try running a school without the support staff but they just don't see it.

A lot of support staff have said they feel almost subservient to teaching staff because of the attitudes and I think it's shocking.

Aibu to still push to try and change these attitudes?

We have “support staff” - secretaries, admin assistants etc. Constantly bitching about “them and us” and that they don’t like the title etc.

That sounds a very unhealthy atmosphere to work in, @HappyTheCroc.

What are the fee earners doing to address the fact their colleagues don’t feel valued?

family
Some people just love to bitch about people they are as further up the chain.

In every school I've worked in most people are lovely, friendly and professional.

But there's always a couple of admin staff who love to bitch about teachers/TAs. There's always a couple of TAs who like yo bitch about teachers and create an us vs them thing. There's always a few teachers who love to bitch about HODs and SLT (even when leadership are trying to do nice things!)
Same principle if previous non-teaching workplaces.
I came to the conclusion that some of the time there are issues of unprofessionalism, but most of the time in any organisation there's people who have massive chips on their shoulder and like to get through the day by being drains.

I appreciate that happens sometimes, maisypops.

It was more that I feel the people who are taking home the £60k salaries in a firm of solicitors might want to think about whether there’s anything they could be doing differently to improve staff relationships, rather than putting it down to “bitching” (hate that word).

It's worth reflecting, definitely. It could be small changes that could make a difference.

Sometimes I think bitching is the best word for how some carry on though. It can be quite infectious and toxic and can take over teams and departments so even a normal day to day frustration gets retold through some silly us vs them view.
I've worked in places like that and it was really hard work to not to cave into drain like complaining as it can change how you view even the tiniest interaction

E.g. X asks Y to do a quick last minute job. Is it annoying? Yes. Is it part of work? Yes.

Some people accept it's annoying. But others (especially in a bitching culture) will take that as 'X is so arrogant. They think they're so much better than us. Can you believe how unreasonable and outrageous they are! I bet I couldn't get them to do a task for me last minute...'

Yes, I know it’s probably just me and that word! I just know that poor communication between staff is a symptom of something fundamentally wrong.

When I was an learning support assistant I used to get fed up of having to support the same children every day, while the teacher, if they supported individual children at all, would always work with the more able. I have a PhD in a STEM subject but was never asked to work with a group of more able children in science.

I like the idea upthread of having teaching working as TAs for a day. Going to suggest that to our Senco!

And yes, I did say something after a while. I moved out of the classroom into family support and safeguarding and love it.

What benefit would be achieved by getting teachers to TA? Are we going to get TAs to plan and teach whole lessons for the day?
Having done both jobs I don't see the point in getting people to do someone else's job.

It's disappointing that they didn't make the most of your subject knowledge. Maybe they felt consistency was more important. Then again I also have strong feelings about children being removed from my class to do 'intervention' with non-specialist TAs when what weaker children need most of all is a specialist working to close the gap.