Blog Comment of the Week: Complaining Colleagues Drive Away A Quality Teacher
Friday November 7, 2008
This week's Blog Comment of the Week deeply saddens me. But I have no doubt that it is true and perhaps even common. Reader Robby wrote:
I taught at a school for the past year after getting certified.... I hold an MA and BA and I am very passionate about my subject. I had great rapport with my students and they all did well on various standard tests and assessments.... I am however leaving teaching.Can you relate? How do you cope with negative forces outside of your classroom walls and outside of your control? Let's share tips and solutions, teachers.The problem was not the classroom but rather the negativity surrounding the classroom. Other teachers who brought their misery to work every day. They shared it with everyone they came into contact with, like a poison. Instead asking at meetings "how can we teach this better" they would grumble, moan, and groan. The lack of advice and constructive criticism coupled with the general mood made the classroom feel more and more like an island. While I know I have a lot to give as a teacher, one year has destroyed teaching for me forever. I suppose there are good schools out there but life is to short to feel the way I did.
Comments
I have been teaching for almost 30 years and understand how this teacher feels. The negativity certainly can get you down. It’s frustrating to hear professionals always pointing out the negative, keeping rumors alive, and keeping track of everyone else’s business. Why don’t they suggest solutions? Seek out the truth? or help others? Because they don’t want to. There are just some people who like to live in the problem. They do not want a solution.
I have learned that anger is the emotional outlet stemming from fear, guilt, or frustration. Most likely the teachers are afraid of the requirements of NCLB, new technology, and the diversity in the learning styles of their students.
My advise to this first year teacher is to surround himself with people that generate positive energy. Remove yourself (as much as possible) from the negative forces. Stay focused. We need smart, energetic, and ethusiastic teachers. Stick with it. As John Wayne wrote to Barbara Walters, “Don’t let the bastards get you down.”
My advice is to not give up yet!!! It is probably the school and certainly not you. Sometimes an administrator can set a ‘bad’ mood that trickles down to the employees. I would try a new school. There are always the negative ones but maybe there won’t be as many.
Certainly, one cannot do without colleagues who by all means, can never feel good with the teaching job. However, strong hearted professionals who is really pasionate with his or her classroom responsibilities will push ahead however hard, or discouraging things may seem.
I have taught as a regular classroom teacher for less that 10 years, upon many ocassion, i have been faced with terrible challenges of teaching and for uncountable times, i can tell how very interesting and rewarding teaching can be. Instead of grumbling colleagues, I prefer to see my former vice principal and latter, former principal as a larger-than-life mentor,professional examples and source of encouragement. It is hight time we look beyound the grumblers and get focused.
I’ve only taught for 10 years and maybe I am out of touch with what you are talking about – Maybe because I am a man most other teachers don’t share their problems with me…
When I first started working in the field of education I was overwhelmed with poor student behavior. I worked with children who were severely mentally disturbed. Once I moved to a different school I couldn’t believe how much better it was. I encourage you not to give up teaching, but rather move (Over) to a different school. You may be delighted by the change without loosing your income over someone else.
After thirty years of teaching, I am within months of retiring from this profession. You can imagine the changes I have seen over the years. While I enjoy teaching, being an educator is not what it use to be. In some ways it is more, in other less. I can understand the negativity- new approaches to teaching based on the theories of armchair educators implemented without proper funding and resources, business models placed on educating children as if they were widgets rather than individuals, standardized testing driving instruction and creating a distaste for learning, district administrative offices top heavy with personnel who justify their jobs by making unnecessary work for classroom teachers, the idea of school and teachers substituting for good parenting and a growing number of children thinking that in their “push button world” everything should be quick and simple a why should they have to work for anything, a philosophy of chance for its own sake and not because change will improve anything to mention a few. At the same time we have competent, eager, highly motivated teachers better trained that any teaching force ever struggling to gain respect and a decent wage. In seven months I will miss what has consumed my own life- the love of sharing “the love of learning.” It is when I look to what education is as opposed to what it has become, that I see the true nature of my profession and I will miss it dearly.
Remember: “when positive goes away negativity rises” If blame is to be placed it must be put upon the principals of the school. They set the tone for the school.
Retired but can never forget after 32 years of teaching and administration how a district can change based on school boads. Most of my career was in one school district. Over the years one school board was elected as best in the state. Another, based on teacher and administrators in district was the worst. Our district was taken over by the Chistians for Excellence in Education (check on web) We went thru hard times, levy failures, no books money seemed to go for new administration and not to the classroom. Over a million disappeared Money seemed to flow but not to education. We lost most of our best administration and many of our good teachers. It took two years to remove the board and administration but ten years for the school to recover. Everyone had the right to complain but they did it in secret for fear of being fired. Not a fun place to work.
Teaching is a gift and it’s a gift that drives you from within. Do not let outside forces control your passion. When your passionate about something you will not let anyone sway you. I have been a teacher for eighteen years and now I am an administrator. I still love teaching. I go into the classrooms at times, take over the lesson and just teach. It still feels good. Imparting knowledge to the young. I still feel there’s nothing better!
John said it so good. Blame the principal for negative atmosphere in a school. We have a new principal this year. We are a K-4 school. She decided after one month that no grade needed recess. She did not know the state guidelines for kindergarten or what our gov. had put into law about certain amt of excerise time for every grade level. The morale was at an all time low. Student behavior was going down hill. I talked with her but it did not help. I finally went to the Superintendent of ED then on to our State Representative that said she was sitting our school up for a law suit. Someway we suddenly got a new chopped up schedule but recess returned. Things are somewhat better now but yes the principal sets the tone of the school.
You are right about hanging out with the right people. And you are right about needing good instructional leadership. Good leaders will assist people in making positive changes in the right direction. If this fails, good leaders will assist people in moving on to something more to their liking. In one year we turned around a school by replacing all of the staff who refused to “get on the boat” going in one direction. Those who wanted to row a different direction took positions elsewhere (or left the profession). One person had 170+ behavior referrals for one year. It seems she wrote the students up for breathing wrong – anything that she didn’t feel was appropriate. Our students were miserable, and no teaching was taking place. Now with the change in principals, staff, attitude, etc. there was such improvement that the state scores in math went from the 30% to the 70+%. Students were happy, parents were happy, staff was happy – everyone except the School Board who were not happy for racial reasons. The principal’s wife couldn’t take the stress and it affected her health. They left after an outstanding year.
Moral: Great attitudes by all of the above make a great school. Hang in there and find a school or group who you can work with.
Wow can I relate to this comment. I am year 32 and I admit that I am getting tired but I am good at what I do and I love my kids. I teach MH( multi-handicapped) K-6 and I just feel that assistants and teachers alike are just unable to work without complaining about something. I have 3 aides in my room, 2 personal and one classroom and there are days like today where I would like to get rid of all adults and just have the kids. I am a strict and hard teacher who pushes these students to be responsible and productive and some days it is tough but when the adults are switching from a pity party to toughies every other day then life is very complicated.
Leave homelife, religion and politics at home, turn off your dang cellphone and concentrate on helping these children to be as productive as possible.
Gosh that was a big soap box tonight! Sorry
In scarcity of good teachers, if a passionate and positive teacher leaves the profession, its a loss specially to students.
Please re-think!
Two quotes which I used often in my 36+ years of teaching helped me to maintain a positive attitude in various settings and buildings.
Jess Lair’s “Children are NOT things to be molded, but people to be unfolded.”
And I am not sure who said this, but my HS sophomore history teacher had it up in his room all year.
“Small minds discuss people.
Average minds discuss events.
Great minds discuss ideas.”
I used this quote to help me determine which teachers I really wanted to talk with after I listened to them chat in the teachers’ lounge.
Advice to the new teacher…I recommend you come to Atlanta, Georgia. Look into Gwinnett, Cherokee and Cobb districts for a teaching position. We need dedicated teachers who love the profession. Yes, we do have negative teachers who do not need to be in the classroom. Please do not allow them to keep you from your calling to be an educator. Children need you to be their inspiration and teacher. Please give it another try and find a school system that values excellent teachers. –Veteran teacher, 33 years.
Public & Christian Schools
I am sorry the comments bother you so much. However, you obviously have not been teaching long enough to experience how much gets heaped upon you from the suits in the front office. It wears on you.
You don’t have to be in the profession very long before you see how much gets put onto teachers from the suits! I’m in year 3 and I feel the pressure. However, I make a conscious choice daily to come in to work with a positive attitude and it makes a HUGE difference. My students have even noticed.
The biggest challenge I face as a newbie is the resistance to change. My ideas for teaching are often shot down as a “waste of time” or pointless…even though I feel that it could benefit our students. It drives me crazy that everyone is willing to go into a meeting with all kinds of gripes and complaints and then CHOOSE to do nothing to fix it OR they shoot down any ideas that require them to do something different than their routine! I don’t get it! If your system is obviously not working, than try something different!
I teach in a big High School. The building I am in is away from the main campus buildings and the teachers there think of themselves as a “world apart”. This Friday afternoon I was teaching and heard a lot of noise in the hallway. I usually teach with the door open to the hallway because the room is stuffy and I like it that way. When the noise in the hallway got to be too much, I went out and asked the students to be quiet. They seemed to be OK with that, but the man who teaches next door to me came storming up and as he was joking and greeting these students, he said to me…”no, YOU close YOUR door”! I was stunned that he would say that and my students in the classroom were amazed that he had said it. After school I went to him and gave him my phone number and asked that he phone me over the weekend and we could talk about what happened. He tore the number up and said that I NEEDED to keep my door closed because the hallway was “public domain”. This certainly isn’t true. I know that this teacher has a great deal of resentment and dislike towards me. He is an “easy” teacher and has told me (when we were speaking) that he “chooses his battles…prefers not to get into it witht he students about behavior, etc”. He also told me once that his only interest in “these people” was that they defend him and pay his social security!!!!!
I am angry at the fact that he disrupted my class and that he spoke to me in a demeaning way in front of students. I left a message with the department head and left school. On Monday I will ask our department head to meet with me and further ask her to mediate with both of us. What else can I do???
Hi,
Our principal makes everyone feel worthless. She is totally disorganized, all of our staff meetings are repeats of previous meetings. We go over the same agenda week after week. I am sick and tired of this. It burns me out.
Principals are supposed to be educational leaders and mentors to teachers. How can a principal who has never taught be a master teacher and evaluating best teaching practices? How does the leadership academy explain that?
Our principal makes everyone feel worthless too. She also makes the a.p.s feel worthless. She even makes the parents and children feel worthless. At a fun day meeting for parents and children she went on talking about how high school and elementary school was worthless. You need a college education to succeed, this to k, 1 and 2 grade students and parents who are mostly central american immigrants who are illiterate and never got to graduate from grade school, never mind high school. I bet they left feeling great. In the three years that she has been at our school 60 teachers quit and every year at least one administrator leaves.
Hello!
Very Interesting post! Thank you for such interesting resource!
PS: Sorry for my bad english, I’v just started to learn this language
See you!
Your, Raiul Baztepo