Trainee quitting without notice

[Flatbred]

I've just checked my work emails as I'm mentoring our trainee and he usually emails me his first plans for the week on Sunday afternoons.

Today I've got an email saying he won't be in from tomorrow, after his formal obs on Friday! He says he didn't take any of the books home with him (I had asked him to, to mark them), so he must have had this in mind but not mentioned it to me.

Obviously we as a school are responsible for the students' learning, and there might be other issues behind this than one bad experience, but I'm struggling to know what to reply, as it seems rude to leave with immediate effect.

To stop marking books and doing planning, then announce over the weekend that all this will need to be picked up seems really unprofessional, but I guess if you quit a PGCE, you don't have to be professional anymore.

I know for a fact if I email the teacher whose lesson he should have been teaching tomorrow, she'll likely only pick it up about 20 minutes before the lesson is due to take place!

Is this something that happens regularly and I'm just expecting too much? Is a trainee just allowed to state that their last day of attendance was last week?

OP I think that you are getting an undeserved bashing here. I have every sympathy for the trainee but mentoring a student is a huge amount of work, usually more time consuming than just getting on and teaching the lessons yourself. If teaching isn't for this person then better to find it out now than qualify and walk out mid way through a term next year.

It sounds as if he was overwhelmed and stressed out and had a total "don't want this any more" moment. It happens. It's almost certainly not because of you as an individual mentor.

A lot of would be teachers have experienced supportive parents, supportive schools, have coped well at university and are simply lost in schools that have a huge amount of deprivation and social issues. It's so outside the world they knew.

At my last place, we had two TF grads - one was in pieces to the point of leaving altogether or having a breakdown and the other was reduced to tears outside lessons and nearly packed it in many times - neither had any experience of multiple children with behavioural, emotional and social difficulties, they'd never met anybody who didn't have a bed of their own, never mind a room, desk, laptop and internet connection and were completely unaware of how the most belligerent students were often the ones who were absolutely terrified because they were genuinely at risk of being stabbed if they got off the bus at the same time as students from other schools on the way home because the bus stop was in a different postcode to home and they were therefore technically trespassing on another gang's territory.

They were completely out of their depth. And were given full teaching timetables with extra responsibilities 'for the experience' - complete with an incredibly critical deputy who had the ability to make everybody feel like shit about themselves.

The difficulty is that for many, they've always been good at what they did. And to be dropped in at the deep end, in a completely alien environment full of poverty and aggression and fear? They don't want to be a failure. They don't want to admit that they might not be good enough. They don't want to risk being told that it's their failing and everybody else manages fine. And they carry on until they snap.

This trainee sounds like he needs support. To check on his wellbeing. He's probably only 21/22. It's a lot to expect of them.

@Flatbred
Where am I sitting back and criticising?

Have you e-mailed him to ask if he's ok and if you can support in any way? If not, then that is exactly what you are doing right now.

@Flatbred I can see your point of view and how it is frustrating and feels disrespectful for him to just leave, but as others have said, it's probably something he has been grappling with. He could have mentioned it, but was probably worried to when he wasn't quite sure what he wanted to do next, but with the weekend to ponder it he might have drafted and redrafted the email several times before sending; knowing that upon doing so it's ending that career path for him more than likely. Even if that is what he wants, it's hard to do. The books could have been a genuine mistake, maybe he did actually forget them as he was so overwhelmed, or maybe he wasn't sure and Friday just tipped him over the edge of wanting to leave. It sounds like you were supportive and spoke to him after to explain options etc, so not much more you could have done. Perhaps he simply couldn't face another day, and he is in a position where he can do that, as unfair as it feels.

I think your awful sending them home at the weekend to do your marking.

Eh? Of course trainees are expected to mark. How are they supposed to learn how to mark otherwise?

Op already said he had from Monday last week to mark.

We had a teach first person that literally lasted a week. I actually admire people who are able to recognise a horrendous job and say 'no thanks' without worrying about putting people's noses out of joint. I think he probably feels less inclined to do the 'decent thing' given that his observation went badly and whatever way you dress up criticism it's going to make him feel like owes the school very little.

OP you need to look at how abrasive your responses are on this thread, on addition to your posting on a public forum about a difficult decision that a trainee has made in the first place. I really don't think you're as supportive as you think you are. If having a trainee quit upsets you this much, you need to consider stepping down as a mentor.

Hang on - he is salaried? TF and salaried School Direct are normally placed on an one-year fixed term contract for their training year, for which notice periods apply to leave mid-year. He may not be free to resign with no notice.

If you are sure that he is salaried rather than receiving a bursary then he will have a contract of employment which will specify a notice period.

So either he didn't get adequate support or wasn't treated well
Nothing like a false dilemma is there, could think of no other reason for his decision to quit than those two choices!

@lilgreen agreed

I’ve heard of far worse eg temporary teachers taking books home with them to mark and then never being seen again The whole group lost their work and had to start new books.
I don’t mean this harshly OP but maybe this lack of perspective is what makes trainees run for the hills. If there hasn’t been time to mark a set of books, it will get done the following week. If an experienced teacher has to ‘wing’ a lesson they didn’t know they would be teaching, everyone will survive. No need for martyrdom: it’s a job to pay the bills like any other and not ‘a calling’. Just a job we have to do to the best of our abilities in the circumstances we are given.

Trainees being expected to adhere to notice periods would be bonkers. What, are they to be forced to come into school, teach lessons with no intention to improve, have mentors and other staff give up their time for pointless mentoring and have kids being taught by someone who is not only not very good but doesn’t want to be there?

Or they’d get signed off with stress for the notice period and continue to be paid.

Best allow them to go.

One of the reasons why this thread gets to me is that it reminds me of an aspect of myself that I didn’t like when I was teaching. The workload pressure was such that I began to lack compassion and empathy in my thinking, when a colleague was ill, or struggling or something else happened that disrupted my day and my plans to get my work done. I noticed it in colleagues too, eventually being treated quite badly when I was off sick in pregnancy.

If teaching retention is to be turned around then schools need to become far more kind and caring workplaces.

MitziK great post, respect to you for an excellent analysis of the challenge facing any entrant to teaching today.

OP, I'm sure you are well-intentioned, but (having worked for 28 years in challenging schools), I think you need to step back a bit and understand your own role in 'the system': we have a massive deficit of teachers (particularly males FWIW), and there has been a proliferation of entry routes to the profession, accompanied by mendacious and misleading media campaigns designed to lure as many would-be teachers as possible. The hard work then falls to the school mentors such as you, in addition to your own (no doubt heavy) workload, you need to spend time and effort developing the trainee.

In most other sectors, it is understood that apprentices are in the process of developing skills and knowledge, rather than being thrown in at the deep end, sink or swim, which is what inevitably happens in teaching.

As PP have said, the decision to quit will have been massive for the trainee, yet you appear to be considering only the impacts on you and your colleagues.

I believe that this exemplifies what is wrong with the current system, in which there are no consistent guidelines for interaction between the mentor and the trainee.

I am sure you are a thoroughly decent person, but many teachers I have worked with get a big power-kick from being allocated a trainee, and are neither professional nor developmental in their interactions, often leading to conflict, disappointment on the part of the trainee and loss of a potential teacher.

One ex-colleague in particular, whose own subject knowledge was severely lacking and who used sarcasm and downright cruelty to the students as her modus operandi, thought she was clever to have 'failed' three trainees on their placements. The reality was that they were not b*tches like her, and their knowledge was better, good enough to know how lacking she was and therefore not prepared to be found wanting by her.

What I mean by 'the machine' is that you are being used by a system which is actually not fit for purpose. I am sure you are nothing like the colleague I have described, but unfortunately I witnessed this type of problem repeatedly, and my sympathy was usually with the trainee.