Help me unpick what is happening here.

June 26, 2023 12:26 PM

I can't fathom how best to approach this workplace situation.

For the past 8 weeks I have been working at a school 2 days a week, tutoring for 5 hours each day. I was asked to go back after tutoring for 15 weeks there last year. I have the same children each week.

Last Monday, when I went to collect the children from the class, I saw that they were all ready to go on a school trip. The class teacher confirmed this. I went back to the office to enquire as to what I should do and suggested that I could come in on another day, when the children would be available. The Headteacher was annoyed that no one had bothered to inform me and after suggesting that I go back home and collect the resources/planning/work I needed in order to tutor the children that I normally tutor on a Wednesday instead, he went to have a word with the class teacher. It took me about 40 minutes to get the things from home and then I tutored the other children for the rest of the day.

I arrived this week to be met with the announcement by the classroom staff that the children couldn’t come out of class as they were doing assessments. The classroom staff suggested that I go to the Headteacher to ask what I should do. So I did. He was not happy. He had a face like thunder. He didn’t say a word but sighed, got up from his chair and walked past me out of his office and down to the classroom. He came back with the children and said he had overridden the class teacher and for me to carry on with tutoring the children as normal.

This is only a small school and word gets around fast. So in the afternoon, there were different staff members in there as I went to collect the children. When I asked for the children, the staff member told me that she needed to do assessments with them. Her tone was defensive. (I thought to myself, we’ve been over this this morning). I said that the Headteacher had told me that I had to take them. She told me to go on then whilst wafting her hands up in the air with a face like thunder.

Some staff members seem to resent me taking children out to do this tutoring. I don’t get it. Another staff member has been awkward all along about me taking three children from his class each week.

I understand that the Headteacher was annoyed with the situation but I didn’t like the way I was treated.
I seem to be causing trouble for him and I don’t know how to handle this situation. I am there for another three weeks. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

posted by charlen to Work & Money (17 answers total)

Best answer: What's happening is that the other staff members are being insubordinate. That's not your problem to solve. It's the headteacher's problem. He'll either make it clear to the other staff members that he wants you to do your work, or he won't, in which case things will continue as they've been.
posted by kevinbelt at 12:36 PM on June 26, 2023 [10 favorites]

Best answer: i would take it to mean there is something else going on between the Headteacher and the staff. It might be as simple as they have been told that they have a priority to achieve and the kids being missing from the class hampers that. If you have someone on the staff that you are friendly and that you trust you can try to ask them some leading questions...but seeing as it is only 6 more days of work I'd just push through.
posted by mmascolino at 12:37 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Do your best for the remaining 3 weeks and keep your head down.

But don’t lose any naturally occurring opportunity to thank the Headteacher for standing up for the importance of what you’re doing with the kids.

And don’t count on being asked back to that school.
posted by jamjam at 12:43 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: There is some problem going on between Headteacher and the class teacher. When they get upset, it's at each other, not at you. If you can, try to avoid getting wrapped up in it.
posted by Ragged Richard at 12:52 PM on June 26, 2023 [14 favorites]

Best answer: IMO you're stepping into other people's drama. I would try to have a sitdown directly with the staff/teachers who are getting annoyed with you to try to understand the situation from their perspective. As far as we can see here, you are just doing what you were asked to do. Maybe the teachers weren't properly informed, maybe they hate the tutoring program for some reason, maybe they just don't like the headteacher? Connecting with them person-to-person is your best shot at making the rest of your time easier.

If it helps, this dynamic is probably not great for the students you tutor. They're seeing this conflict happening around their needs. Hopefully you and the other staff/teachers can align on that, at least.
posted by wemayfreeze at 12:53 PM on June 26, 2023

Best answer: Yeah, I would just try to stay as neutral as possible around everyone. For whatever reason, the teachers clearly find the tutoring disruptive to their own work, but the Headteacher wants the tutoring to happen. Don't take the teachers' attitude as personal - they are clearly more irritated at the Headteacher. Just do your job, and let him deal with it -that's his job.
posted by coffeecat at 12:58 PM on June 26, 2023 [8 favorites]

Best answer: I could come up with twenty plausible theories as to why the teachers are being insubordinate, but nobody here can know for sure. What you see is what we know: the Head wants you to tutor the kids, and the teachers are acting bitchy about it.

I would absolutely NOT sit down with the teachers to ask them about this; the last thing you want is to be drawn into this drama.

I would however ask the Head something like "is there a schedule or something I can check the day before to make sure the kids are going to be available for the tutoring?"
posted by fingersandtoes at 1:14 PM on June 26, 2023 [17 favorites]

Best answer: I used to coordinate a program that pulled kids out for mental health supports. Often teachers don't like to have kids pulled out of instructional time-- I think it interrupts their flow, they have to resettle and catch the kids up, it makes other kids jealous, and maybe some of them feels that it devalues the role of teacher.

In any case, it's got nothing to do with you. Schools can be full of drama between the teaching staff and the administration. If the headmaster says you're supposed to pull the kids out of class at a certain time, it's really out of your hands how people react. He's their boss.
posted by ambulanceambiance at 1:28 PM on June 26, 2023 [7 favorites]

Best answer: Witnessing other people's frustration is not mistreatment. It is uncomfortable for outsiders not involved in the labor issue, sure, but nobody's having a labor issue AT you. You just happen to be there, and you will almost certainly be happier if you stay out of it.

(This is assuming you're getting paid whether or not any children are even there when you arrive. If you're showing up to do work and not getting paid, you definitely gotta get into it.)

But, other people being obstructionist at each other is making your life harder. The most efficient pressure you can apply is on the headmaster, and I would say maybe try dropping in when nothing is actively going wrong (if that's possible!) and saying, "Hello, it seems like I'm running into a lot of unexpected schedule issues, is there some other way you want me to handle these? Is there a way for me to get a more accurate schedule?" Play a little innocent, like you haven't noticed the apparent war brewing. The answer may be, "no, you just have to come tell me, I have to intervene here, it's a whole thing" but at least you've established your non-fault here in a pointed way so maybe he will not display his aggravation in front of you so much. This may be the wrong kind of passive aggression as your question sounds more Commonwealth than US-ish but in Pushy American would say something like, "I'm SO sorry to be such a bother," when we're not actually being a bother at all, and then it puts the headmaster in the position to apologize to you.
posted by Lyn Never at 1:34 PM on June 26, 2023 [3 favorites]

Best answer: Not your circus, not your monkeys. Just keep asking the Headmaster when things aren’t clear.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 2:51 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I also suspect the issue is that the teachers don't like their kids being pulled out of their classes. (I'm also confused why you'd be tutoring kids in a way that's seeming to make them miss learning material to begin with.) I would approach it with the class teachers (individually) with something like, "It seems like the tutoring is creating a problem for your class. I need to do the tutoring, but is there a different way we could schedule it so it causes less of a problem?" If there's anything close to a consensus among them, or if their suggestions or concerns are reasonable and something I could accommodate, I'd try to implement them (or bring them to the Head teacher, if I needed to, but frame them as if they were my ideas, like, "I'm thinking this would work easier for everyone if I made these changes... does that work for you?")

I don't know if that's culturally appropriate where you are, but that's how I'd approach it in my context. I'm not sure it helps to assume there's unrelated conflict between the adults here until you've asked if the tutoring itself is causing work-related problems.
posted by lapis at 2:56 PM on June 26, 2023

Best answer: As someone who sometimes has to pull students from classrooms, I understand that teachers find it disruptive. Someone shows up, they have to stop what they're doing, the whole class turns around to see, some kids gets to leave and the ones left behind feel left out or the ones getting pulled feel singled out, the teacher needs to get their train of thought back and go on with the lesson....

Is your pickup time during a natural transition in the day or in the middle of a lesson? Can it be changed to a transition time?

Can the students come to you without you needing to personally go to the classroom to pick them up. Can you call the classroom when you're ready and tell the teacher to send the kids down?

If all else fails, keep your head down. There's only 6 more days. None of them are mad at you.
posted by Nickel at 3:05 PM on June 26, 2023

Best answer: There's a communication failure happening somewhere, but given how little time you spend there, I wouldn't bother trying to understand or solve it. What I would do is express sympathy when the teachers get annoyed, like "Yeah, there seem to be a lot of scheduling problems, I don't know what the deal is! Schools, amirite? Just trying to do my job". Can't hurt, might remind the teachers not to take out their frustration on you.
posted by umwelt at 4:33 PM on June 26, 2023

Best answer: Hello I am an elementary teacher. To me this just sounds like run of the mill miscommunication/lack of communication between principal and classroom teachers about schedules that happen in schools. It has happened in every school I have worked at and it's usually never about any person pulling kids out, just about lack of communication about any kind of schedule.

When you started tutoring did you set a schedule with the teachers or were you given a set schedule? Is it the end of the summer program and teachers are feeling stressed about needing to show progress with the students?

Teaching is a weird career because your job is based on how other people test and testing system is based on so many factors that have nothing to do with the teachers ability to impart information or help a child improve their skills.
posted by ruhroh at 5:06 PM on June 26, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: It sounds like the teachers are annoyed that your tutoring is messing with their lesson plans, likely because they're not being told far enough in advance of when this will be happening. They're not annoyed at you per se, but at the background poor communication. If this was to be a long-term gig, it would be worth your effort to try and get the situation resolved, but the effort required is just not worth it for six days work. Maybe communicate with the teachers the day before each session to remind them you're coming so they're not caught by surprise?
posted by dg at 5:13 PM on June 26, 2023

Best answer: Do you work for the National Tutoring Programme in the UK, by any chance? There have been political difficulties with this in some schools (I'm a governor in a small primary and have heard things) but none of it is your problem, unless the work is self-employed and don't get paid if you don't tutor. That would indeed be a problem but may be something the organisation that sends you into the school can help with.

The head will be annoyed because some of the money for tutoring comes out of the school budget, and he wants to see that this investment is going somewhere. The teachers may be annoyed at the disruption. But they are not being annoyed *at* you, even though it might feel like they are because you're in the line of fire. I imagine it's hard to form relationships if you're not there much, but anything you can do to make them realise you're just there to do a job, not to make their lives harder, might help. Otherwise, just keep doing the job as best you can.
posted by altolinguistic at 1:07 AM on June 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Not your battle to fight. You're stepping into other people's drama, as everyone pointed out. Keep your head down, ask nicely about a little more coordination, and finish the job.
posted by kschang at 7:39 AM on June 27, 2023