To think this teacher is trying to take credit for my work

[1Raisedeyebrow]

AIBU - I work in an SEN school and was asked a year ago to rewrite the whole school art curriculum from EYFS through to post 16 for both students at our SEN school and those registered at our school but attend main stream school . I have had to make sure I follow the national curriculum but adapt it to suit our students, so it is quite personalised.
I have recently been asked to add a section that allows teachers to easily copy and paste targets that they can include in the students reports.

The art teacher from another school in our trust has emailed today asking if we can have a chat and complete the curriculum together as it will be easier for us to do together. This request is perfectly reasonable if they had emailed me a year ago before I did all the hard work. I have near enough finished adding the section now requested and think it’s cheeky for them to now come in and try and get credit for all the work I have done. If they wanted to do this jointly they have had over a year to contact me and work with me to create this. Instead they have waited until the easy bit of adding a few report friendly targets is requested and wants to work together. This request to add targets was over a two months ago and they had plenty of time to approach me to do it together then also.

AIBU to think they can go squat in a cactus patch or should I let them contribute the last sentence required to complete the curriculum and then getting credit for all my hard work.

Agree- put you name and date/ version in a footer, or at the end. Perhaps also put a review date as well (say in 3 years). This would give you some ownership/responsibility for curriculum, good for promotion (& reviewing updating it in 3 yrs will be far quicker than rewriting). And similarly if curriculum has changed, and it is a big piece of work, doesn’t commit you to doing it personally but can lead/ delegate on it in future.
good luck !

Why would you care about what a teacher in a different school does or says - and there is no reason to believe they are aiming for joint credit anyway.

It is not your IP. I presume the senior leadership want schools within the trust to help each other out rather than have people recreate the wheel because others are too petty to share and think they own the IP.

🤣

A lot of advice on this thread is really bad as it is coming from people who don’t work in education. Teachers churn out this stuff all the time and happily share it. It will just make you seem inexperienced and difficult to work with, if you object to someone else using it.

She isn’t objecting to someone else using it, she said she would share it.

What she’s objecting to is someone coming in at the final hour to claim they collaborated on the project.

Just adapt what you’ve said in your second paragraph to inform her that you are pretty much done and that the time for collaboration has passed.

Don’t use your last paragraph!

You just say that you're pretty much done for your school and send it to her with an offer to discuss how it works in practice for you. Assuming it's working well and everyone is happy with it. She may well need to adapt for her own school anyway. Putting your name in a footer would just make people roll their eyes, although IME, lots of SLT do like a bit of school branding on documents like this.

But they haven’t done that. They probably do not know how far on OP is and have simply suggested working together. All OP needs to do is say yes of course we can catchup, although it is more or less done now.

This. It’s not normal in education to be so possessive over work. Education is collaborative. If you’ve designed a great curriculum then it’s beneficial for others to have it. Ultimately it’s what’s best for the children you’re educating.

Stealing with pride is absolutely fine and is a very pragmatic approach, but you give credit to the originator.

@DifficultBloodyWoman always remember version control is your friend, it irritates the hell out of those who like to claim credit. I find 8pt font in the footer with a combination you know. The other one that is useful is checking who created a document.

OP’s not saying people can’t have it but that they can’t claim credit for it. It’s quite clear and a bit worrying the lack of reading comprehension on this thread.

maybe it needs to be changed in some way?

No problem with comprehension but can't see where op says that this teacher is trying to claim credit.

She's from another school in her trust. She rang and asked if they could work together. In any school I've ever worked at, the answer to that would be 'sure - it's finished - here it is and hope it's helpful.'

This other teacher won't claim credit. That isn't how teaching works. It will just be quietly adopted in her school. In discussion she'll say that she nicked it from a colleague.

But what people are trying to explain is that, in education, it is unusual for people to claim credit for this kind of thing at all.

It's not just education actually. In all industries there's an expectation of sharing resources within the company. There is also sharing within industries for regulatory stuff, open source / collaborative methodology sharing etc. To be fair to OP though, she's proud of her work and keen for people to see that she did it, at an early career stage that's absolutely reasonable, because it will help her advance to the next stage. In a few years she won't care at all.

This would be a weird thing to do, and would not reflect well on the OP.

@TheFallenMadonna version control is a professional approach to developing documents. It means you know which is the latest versions, which are the published version, which version was “live” at any given point in time.

Far to many people are slap dash about version control because they can’t be arsed to do it properly.

If they want to use it or adapt it for their own use it’s up to them. I have designed it for all teachers whether class teachers, art or therapists to use in their sessions. I also link my planning documents which gives examples of how to conduct the art lessons for anyone who are not confident in delivering in these sessions.

There is a habit in our school to announce when new resources are available for everyone to access and give credit to who designed it. My issue is that they will be able to take credit if I let them join me after I’ve done all the hard work and it has been a known requirement for this to be completed a year ago. The school did not previously have an art department and I have started everything from scratch which is why I’m a bit annoyed. Especially as I had mentioned it a while ago to them that we need to do this.

I have taken into account everyone’s view point and will just tell them it’s too late in a polite way.

Another reason why I’m conflicted is because I do not have the personality to say “well actually they came in when I near enough completed it so actually it’s my work”

I don’t want to seem difficult and possessive by saying no but with the prospect of myself being devalued and they gaining credit for my work has annoyed me.

I have realised I need to be self assertive moving forward as the timid do no not prosper.

Thank you for all the feedback

YANBU. She’s wanting to get recognised as a contributor for her own benefit without investing any real time or effort, and you’ve seen straight through it.

Tell her that you don’t need help because you are now so close to finishing it that it would actually take more time to have a chat with her to discuss the parts that needs completing than it would for you to just do it yourself.

Just give her a very firm ‘no thanks.’

Put a footer on the document with the title, date, version and who it was created by. Look up how to lock the just the footer so people can edit the document but no the footer. You can also set the created author on the document, so should you need evidence for the promotion.

If you want to be really specific you could create a page with the documents editing history and lock that.

I'd do that with any document you create.

I do understand about document control, and there are documents I would do that with. I wonder if the posters suggesting it are familiar with the resources being discussed though.

@TheFallenMadonna you haven’t explained why you think it would be a “weird thing to do”.

I put version control on all types of documents.

That's why I stated only looking the footer. Allows the document to be edited after.

Alternatively you can turn on logging of document changes

Just say "I've actually nearly completed it but I appreciate the offer, it will be ready on X date".

Ctrl-A, Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V.

People can take any info if they want. It's fine to label the footer, especially for a junior like OP who's looking to get credit noted, but don't give people funny ideas that they can actually protect copyright like this.