Does anyone here find it really annoying having to plan with other teachers?
I’m in a 3 form entry school and really it should be easier sharing work with 2 other teachers but the way things are, I’d much rather just use my own plans and resources for everything.
Every week, I sit down in an hour long “planning” meeting with my Year 1 teaching colleagues. One explicitly does not want to use that time to work and gets annoyed about all sorts of things like the fact that we have to teach grammar to such young children and she rants about how cruel giving such tasks to her less able children is it at length, rather than just differentiate her lessons so that her less able children focus on a paired back version of the grammar focus and enjoy success.
The other teacher is really hard-working and willing to work but, because the other teacher is so hard to communicate with, and gets cross really easily, we both just sit there for an hour and have to crow-bar actual productive conversations in under the radar.
We all agreed early on that I’d plan the Maths because I already have it all and am head of maths but this colleague then often emails us and says she’s “added the maths planning to our folder” and it’s generally nothing to do with what is on the long term plan.
Recently, she added a plan for Relationship Education that had a learning objective from the Autumn Term 1 unit on it which meant I just had to do it.
She doesn’t agree with assessing children so kicks off about it but if we don’t assess how can we measure progress from their starting points and plan based upon the children’s needs? If I ask this she seems irritated that I’m man-splaining the fundamentals of pedagogy to her. So now I just nod.
I have been put in charge of the style of Maths teaching across the school but despite this very particular method, this colleague just does whatever she wants.
Last year it was worse because the other teacher who has since left, was bone idle, literally leaving at 3:30pm every day and uncontactable at all other times outside of school hours.
This year it’s a bit better because the new teacher contributes a lot of useful stuff to the team.
I like this other teacher a lot as a person but her working style pisses me off because it causes me so much work.
The trouble is she is very’ in there’ with the Executive Head and the governors and seems to spend endless time stroking everyone’s egos, so her relationships with people make her very popular. Meanwhile - muggins is in the background being bad-cop because I actually want things to be done well in terms of educating the children.
It’s infuriating. I know that if I spoke to my boss about it she’d not do anything because she never does with stuff like this.
I think I might start ‘quiet-quitting.’ Or withholding my contribution in the same way.