Senior management seem to forget that most of our time is taken up with the teaching of children.
Sometimes issues arising in lessons spill over into break times and lunch times: keeping children back for bad
behaviour, sorting out work for those who have been away, going to duplicate booklets when dozy kids have lost
their originals, etc. During the school day and beyond, most teachers are busy with the day to day stuff, and
it’s enough of an effort to keep on top of the basics: behaviour management and dealing with the consequences
dished out for bad behaviour; preparing resources; hunting down missing text books; marking homework and
coursework and chasing up the inevitable missing pieces; running extra-curricular clubs; preparing for open
evenings and parent evenings; sorting out bullying and lost property amongst form group members; learning how
to use something new on the computers in five minutes in order to stay one step ahead in the following lesson;
the list could go on and on.
So when a senior member of staff swans into my room, making full use of their fifty percent (at the most) teaching timetable, and starts making demands, I like nothing more than to consult the enlarged photocopy of my timetable stuck to my wall, squinting in a slightly exaggerated and dramatic way as I seek out a free period amongst the mass of lessons, and then tell them I could probably manage to do whatever it is they’re asking of me by the end of the week, provided I’m not taken for cover during my solitary remaining free period. Very often these demands from senior management are made when I’m in full flow of a lesson, so I have to stop to listen to them or talk with them outside or hunt out whatever it is they want, and meanwhile the class descends into slight chaos, and the pace of the lesson is lost and the enthusiasm has subsided when I try to pick up where I left off.
Oh they probably see me as an awkward bugger at times like this, but I think that interrupting my lesson is entirely unprofessional – they wouldn’t dare to do it if the inspectors were in, so why act in such a slack way at other times? My priority, and the reason I’m paid to do the job, is to teach children, or enable them to learn, or whatever the current phraseology is. Anything that gets in the way of that makes me resentful. If a kid interrupts a lesson I put them in detention. But when senior management interrupt with their demands for attendance registers or behaviour reports, I’m supposed to smile compliantly and jump to attention.
Our school has invested so much in technology over the last few years; surely it doesn’t take a genius to
work out a more efficient way of gaining data like attendance records. Why aren’t I taking my register
electronically? Why don’t senior management email me with their demands, which I can deal with when I have
a moment rather than when I’m trying to keep a lid on behaviour whilst simultaneously trying to teach the
kids something? Surely this would save their shoe leather too, marching around school to find teachers and
burst in on their lessons. We have all the technology in place, but no-one has the most practical and useful
applications in mind: senior management often conveniently forget what it’s like to be a grass-roots teacher,
and so are incapable of making the best decisions. All we need is a suggestion box so that the people doing
the actual teaching can submit the simplest of suggestions that wouldn’t even occur to those charged with
running the place. Though I suppose several committees would have to approve before a suggestion box could
be placed in the staffroom. I know what my first suggestion would be though: Oy! Senior management! Don’t
interrupt my lessons!
added 9/10/05
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