Teacher Series: The teacher who walked out of school and refused to come back!

Teacher Series: The teacher who walked out of school and refused to come back!




Many years ago, we had an expatriate (expat) language acquisition teacher in the school where I was a middle level leader. She was a native speaker, but not a trained teacher. The teacher had class control issues and could not manage her class. She had come and reported to me that she had trouble with the class and students were not listening to her. I had immediately spoken to the students about being respectful, about being in the school for learning and they had promised to behave. I also gave the teacher some strategies for better class control.


Then once, the teacher came to me, very upset. She said that the students used the 'f...' word in Hindi. They said it under their breath but she heard it. She said she had enough. I told her that I will take it up with the parents. I sent emails and organised meetings with parents of the two or three boys who said it.


When the parents met me, I told them what their children said to the teacher. The parents were upset with the students and asked the students to apologise to me. I told them that they would have to apologise to the teacher in writing. The meetings with the parents got over and I was in the process of collecting the written apologies. In the meantime, the people at the front desk informed me that the teacher just left school without informing anyone. We tried to contact the teacher over the phone. The senior management made contact with the teacher and the teacher told them that the students were very rude to her and it had reached a level where she could not accept it so she has quit her job and does not intend to continue.


The management sent her an email accepting her resignation and stating that they did not want the teacher to continue. The other expat teachers asked for a meeting with the management in support of this teacher saying that she should not be asked to leave. We had the meeting and to cut a long story short, in the end, the teacher stayed.


I had a very good relationship with this teacher. She was honest and had no guile. Once, when she came to my cabin, she told me that I smelled of perspiration and if I could consider wearing perfume. She also said other teachers were talking about it. She said that as a friend, she needed to tell me that and not talk behind my back. I used to wear synthetic fabric and on hearing this, I changed to wearing cotton that let my skin breathe. I also purchased a good perfume. I wondered, if she could share information as personal as this with me, why did she not tell me that she had come to a breaking point with the students? 


I was upset with the teacher at first…how could the teacher walk out of the door? Did the teacher not realise that she was responsible for the students? Did she give a thought about what would happen to them? To my mind, at that time, it was completely unacceptable and unethical. But now when I reflect on it, I think about how I could have handled this differently. Maybe the teacher could have been a part of the process where I had called parents and told them about the unacceptable behaviour of the student. Maybe, I could have validated the teacher’s feelings more so that the teacher felt better. Maybe the student apologies could have been emailed earlier before the teacher thought that nothing was being done. Later, once the teacher felt validated, I could have mentored the teacher about more strategies for better class control. But also a part of me thinks that the teacher overreacted, that she should have spoken to the students about essential class agreements, that when she reported the behaviour to me, she should have waited to see the outcome. 


I have come a long way now. I make sure teachers feel validated, at the same time, undertake measures to solve the problem.


#relationships,#new teachers,#behaviour,#school,#learning,#teacher-student relationships, #myp, #teaching,#students,#learning support,#ib,#LGBTQ, #motivation, #intercultural awareness

Popular posts from this blog

Child Series - Student safety

Image
I remember being scared of many of my teachers. They would hit students. I remember that our craft teacher was extremely strict. If we misbehaved or were caught talking or did anything to upset her, she would take a wooden ruler, ask us to put out our hand, close our fists to and make our knuckles visible, which she would hit our knuckles with the ruler, so we were very scared of her. I also remember an English teacher who would remove the pants of boys and make them parade through the school in case of any mis-behaviour. I remember the boys in my class screaming and crying and begging the teacher not to remove their pants. This is a problem at so many levels. First, you are shaming the child and humiliating him. Second, you are sexualising the problem.Third, you are scarring the children emotionally and traumatising them for years to come. The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009, which has come into force with effect from 1 April 2010, prohibits 'phy...
Read more

Child series - Five articles

Image
     Child series - Five articles  I was perhaps in the sixth grade. We had a teacher - a craft teacher.  Craft period was when we would make products out of paper, cardboard or other material.   The culmination activity at the end of the year was creation of any five three-dimensional articles. Now the teacher told students that if they bought a plastic doll from her, some velvet material and some other accessories like sequins, she would help them make a dress for the doll from the velvet cloth and the doll in the velvet dress could be one of the articles. As this is so long ago, I cant exactly remember if students had to buy the doll from the teacher for a fee or if the students had to buy the doll and the velvet cloth themselves from a shop and the teacher would help them stitch the velvet dress for a fee, but a fee was involved. Craft was not something I was good at, but I could not dream of asking my parents for money for the doll.  Money was spe...
Read more

Child Series - Importance of Consent

Image
Child Series - Importance of Consent “Love Our Children Day” is celebrated in USA on the first Saturday of April, focusing on raising awareness about child abuse and promoting loving, respectful relationships with children. As this is the month of April, this post is to raise awareness about child abuse, honor all children, encourage the development of loving and respectful relationships with children and raise awareness of the importance of consent. My cousin sister and I (we lived together in a joint family) were a year apart and walked to school. We had to reach school by 7.15 am. It was a ten minute walk. Seven minutes walk to the main gate from our house in a housing colony and then 2 minutes to cross the main road and a minute to reach the school that was diagonally across. The last five minutes of walking in the colony to the main gate was walking in a lane with a compound wall on both sides - no buildings or houses. At that time in the morning, the lane was usually deserted. Wh...
Read more