Wednesday 17 September 2008

Mind Full of Teaching and Exasperation

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I am a teacher. Perhaph, you´ve realised it already. I love my job. Sometimes it is not easy, but I am usually a cool-headed and self-possessed person which can help to handle the situation.

I teach at two absolutely different schools.

I´ve been teaching at primary school for five years now. The school is very small but familial, nice and supportive as for children as for us, the teachers. I teach children from 9 to 11 years old. I think we are friends but they respect me.
The only thing that makes me a bit disappointed there is a fact, that all of my colleagues are women. The headmaster is a woman, all pedagogues are women, even our janitor is a woman. They are very nice and we get on well together, but sometimes it is a bit boring without men´s kind of humour. In spite of all these things, I feel very comfortable and happy teaching there.


Since this September I´ve been teaching also at language school. I am a form teacher of class of twenty energetic students from 19 to 23 years old. All of them are strong personalities. At first I was a bit afraid if I could handle them, but my worries were useless and they respect me and are very nice and friendly. Also the headmaster and management of the school are very nice and helpful ladies and I cannot say a single bad word about them.

The problem is one of my colleagues. The situation is following: There are two other teachers who teach my class. The first one is very nice (sometimes maybe too nice) lady about 60 years old with long practise in teaching children. And the other one is the problem.

It is a 23 years old girl with no experience with teaching at any school. And furthermore, she has no proper education for teaching. She has only FCE (first certificate in English), which is the level of knowledge we should prepare our students for. All these things would´n matter if she was a good teacher with lots of knowledge. But she is not.

I am so angry with her. I really want to learn my students something. Not just explain the curriculum to them, but also make them comfortable with it. I want them to have a good base and build another things on it. At the end I want them to go to any certificate exam and pass it.

But she is so big-headed that she doesn´t want to hear any piece of advice, not from me, not from the other colleagues, not from anyone. Because she is right... She even got annoyed when the headmaster told her that she didn´t behave professionally. She didn´t think about it at all. She thinks the headmaster did her an injustice. She has no humility.

I don´t understand why she was hired. And the only thing that makes me feel better a bit is the fact that she is teaching my students just one day a week. Thanks to her I am telling myself: "Hey, you are a really good teacher! You care, the students like you, your colleagues respect you, you are a good teacher!" and I feel a bit better. But her unwillingness to hear anybody else and confess the mistake make my blood boil.

I was trying to find some picture of me reflecting how I feel these days. Well, I´ve found the one above.
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4 comments:

Namnet said...

to Tony: Welcome to my playground:-) Yes, jumping on something would be fitting. Perhaps jumping on the the picture of that girl...

Namnet said...

Thank you Island Rambles for you supporting comment.
Yes, I agree with you. I am usually a very positive person and this post was a bit of wasting my energy as I had to think about her and even wrote my thoughts. Now, I am optimistic again and have gotten rid of her from my mind.
My problem is that I always try to do my best and I expect the other people should do the same. Well, but they sometimes don´t.

PJ said...

That's just perfect! I love it! How wonderful that your parents saved that photograph of you and you got to reconnect with those childhood feelings. I'm sure your colleague will either grow up and shoulder her responsibilities or move on to something else. You sound like you're a great teacher.

Namnet said...

to PJ: I´ve always loved that photo. It is perhaps the only photo of me not smiling or looking cute as a child:-) It has its own story but I will tell it in the next post.
And thank you for your comment. I am keen on teaching and I really try to do my best to be a good teacher. I was lucky that my first job was among superb colleagues (excellent teachers) and among wonderful and very clever children. I think the first experience is always significant and I learnt a lot from them. And the other important thing - I love the subject I teach. You cannot be burst into flames by somebody who is not burning. So I will try to never get smother:-) and of course, I am still learning myself (at university, by colleagues, even from children, from my own experience, books, etc.).