Hi everyone,
Long time lurker, first time poster.
So I live and work in China, at an international school of mostly American/Canadian teachers. I'm British (not that it matters).
Today, I used the school website to change my classroom to another so my students could use the smart board. Got to class, everything seemed okay, then my coworker turned up and demanded to know why I was in the room as it was his classroom. Extra note, my school provides a printed timetable of room availabilities and his name was not on that. It had a different teacher who was off due to Christmas hence the room's availability.
I explained what happened ie I booked the room on the website and that it was free. He didn't accept this well, started shouting at me in front of 3 of my students. I kept calm and told him to stop shouting and we can talk about it later. My main thought was I'm missing 11 students, i want them to be here first before I try to find a new classroom (if I really had to). However, colleague's main argument was that the classroom was his, and no website would tell him otherwise.
I got kicked out of the room 20minutes later and moved to a new one despite much confusion on the topic. Turns out he told admin a lie, but that's another topic. I finish my class, and head back to my office.
In the office, I wait for him to come back. Yes, I'm annoyed but I'm also not the kind of person to take it out on people. First thing I did, was apologise to him for this miscommunication. However, he then starts shouting at me - I mean, full on shouting and then screaming at me. I'm still trying to explain what happened, but he's not listening. Just keeps interrupting me to shout. I then kind of realise there's no point, so I tell him I didn't appreciate how he spoke to me in front of the students. He literally said, "I don't give a fuck about that" which says enough, but I then realise for sure that he won't listen to anything I say now. I will admit, I raised my voice then to just say "enough." I'm shaking in anger and about to cry because I've never had anyone talk to me this way before.
He then goes out of our office to complain about me to another staff member. This turns into a 10minute session of voice notes where the staff member tells me how he said I didn't apologise so he has threatened to resign. In addition to this, he complained about office politics (even she was clueless to this), threatened to move offices, and complained about me - I know I am to blame for part of this, I don't dispute this, however, his complaint is that apparently I did this because of a question he had about an exam paper - I didn't, but that's the level he came to.
However, I will add that since day 1, this colleague has made very sexist remarks about students (he repeatedly prints off half-naked women and puts them on his office walls too), he repeatedly ignores the female staff (myself, and the other colleague who is also head of a year group), and has talked down about people's educations. He's been known to have had several complaints made about him.
I did send through an apology on our messaging app that we use here in China (like WhatsApp) and he's send me a voice note back, but I refuse to listen to it. As far as I'm aware, we're never going to be friends and I don't plan on it.
However, he's made such a fuss that our overall department head now knows about it, and my kids have complained to their homeroom teacher too.
Aibu to ask for advice on what to do/say next? Obviously I don't want to continue the fight, but I don't want to apologise anymore than I already have. I'm only just learning how to defend myself so I do acknowledge I should have said something earlier about the smaller stuff ie sexist comments etc