Teacher series: Some great positive relationships!
Some great positive relationships!
Many years ago, I joined this international school as a middle year’s teacher. IB was new to me and I was drowning in the IB sea of documents, procedures and processes. It was induction week and the new teachers had independent working time. When I was trying to figure out what I need to do and how to prioritise, there came into the room, this person with glasses and the kindest face I have ever seen. She sat next to me and said “Don't worry, I will help you”. She took me through what I needed to do, helped me prioritise my work and made everything seem so easy and doable. She was very efficient and knowledgeable and cleared all my doubts. She did this of her own volition. No one asked her to. And she did this with all the new teachers. She was phenomenal and soon became my mentor. Our relationship blossomed into a beautiful friendship. We went on to work together in different schools and we were like yin and yang; we had different strengths and we made a great team. We respected each other’s perspectives even if we did not agree with each other. To this day I am in touch with her. I write this to all experienced teachers. You will have new colleagues. Please help them. They need all the help they can get and they in turn will help other new teachers. As they say, the best way to repay a kindness is to pass it on!
I have mentioned in my earlier blog posts about how I was new to IB and found this teacher who was also new to IB and we became friends. We became homeroom teachers together and learned the programme together. We would sit together and read the IB documents and plan lessons, ask each other questions and motivate each other to do our best. We would go into each other's classes and teach topics that we were good at, so that students get the best of both worlds. Over the years, we had our differences and arguments, but after talking about the issues, we moved on. Even after so many years, we are still in touch and are good friends.
A relationship that got on the wrong foot with a colleague, later changed. Many years ago, in school, I was a new teacher and away on planned leave. I painstakingly created the lessons for my absence. The cover teacher did not go to class. I had just recently experienced this with another teacher who also forgot to go to my class. These were two incidents back to back when the lessons I had planned did not reach the students. I complained to the Coordinator or Head, I don't remember who. What I did not know was, just like me, this teacher was a new teacher who had recently joined the school and the cover procedure was new to her and hence she did not know the process. She had a very bad impression of me at first as she felt that I should have checked with her about why she missed the cover and I did not give her that opportunity. However, we were in the same department - Humanities, and we had many opportunities to interact. As we got to know each other better as people, we both realised that our assumptions about each other were wrong and we both were helpful and kind and diligent and sincere and hardworking. We forged a great friendship that lasts to this day and we often joke about the incident.
I have also worked with leaders who I have got along with famously. There was this Head of school with whom I started off on the wrong foot. This happened many years ago, when I was a consultant to a school and was dealing directly with the owner of the school. We decided dates and times when I would visit the school. I thought the Head of School would know about my visit, but there was a miscommunication and somehow she was not in the loop. When I went to the school and met her to say hello, and mentioned my session, she said that she did not know about it. She was naturally angry. She said she cannot give me time with teachers as this was not informed to her and was not planned. Teachers were in their classes. I said I understood and from that time on, made it a point to collaborate with the Head of School, taking it upon myself to do this as an additional precaution. As my interactions with the Head of School became frequent, she got to know me as a person and realised that the initial non communication was not my fault. I was my normal hardworking, dependable, reliable, committed self and had the best interest of the school at heart and she warmed up to me. In the time I worked for that school, we shared a great relationship. She got me a painting from Indonesia as a memento and I still have that framed on my wall.
There were other Heads of Secondary and Heads of School with whom I got along from the word go. There were colleagues whose core values matched mine and we shared a great rapport. Some teachers who I mentored, be it Service Coordinators or CAS supervisors or subject teachers...we shared a wonderful equation. Librarians, Inclusive Educators, EAL teachers, office admin staff...the list goes on. We forged some great positive relationships and are in touch even today.
Somewhere I read that colleagues are not family or friends, they are just colleagues. But my experience has been very different, As stated in the above paragraphs, I have had some great relationships with colleagues, teachers and heads, in the schools I have worked for. Our friendship continues to this day, long after I stopped working for those schools. We meet physically when possible to catch up with our lives, or we meet online and we support each other through difficult professional or personal times and are comforted knowing that we can reach out and help is just a call away.
