What They Don't Teach You During Teacher Training: Part 5 - Colleagues

• Part 1: Time Management

• Part 2: Parents

• Part 3: Vulnerable Children 

• Part 4: Bullying 

• Part 5: Colleagues

• Part 6: Motivation

This series of blog posts covers areas that I feel are often missing from the PGCE year and teacher training in general. That's not a criticism - there simply isn't time to cover everything but I have been using my extra pandemic time with the university library and the World Wide Web at my finger tips to search for answers to questions that have been perplexing me for some time. It turns out that many people have thought about these things a lot more than me so I'm excited to be sharing the insights that resonated the most.

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Before even writing this I am already starting to regret having put Colleagues onto my list of blog posts because it is such a difficult area of teaching to navigate. And I'm not an expert, but I have worked in a LOT of different schools, often only popping in for a supply lesson or an after-school course and then back out again but the atmosphere that you breathe in is unique to every premises. Schools are, like businesses, a microcosm of society and the members within it, with the general mood being greatly influenced by the management. But let's take a look at why schools can be particularly difficult places to sail the treacherous waters of office politics. 

1. Schools are very flat organisational structures. There is a Senior Leadership team, often only one or two people, and maybe some coordinators for different year groups and subjects. Then all the teachers rub along together irrespective of experience, competence or temperament. In Italy this unusual set up (for the world of work) is made even more er... complex by schools being run on a democratic basis. The Teachers' Collegio Docenti reigns supreme over the Head. This makes school politics utterly unavoidable.
2. Teachers spend the most of the school day in their classrooms in charge of their class/es, and beyond the Pre-school, mostly alone. They are not used to taking orders and they are also very busy. 
3. Teachers tend to be in teaching because they care about teaching rather than for the money, which means that teaching can be an ideologically charged profession and although pedagogical ideas go in and out of fashion like wheel going round and round, school policy changes can produce a big reaction in the staff meeting (or its aftermath) because people have very strong ideas about the right way of doing things. 
4. Teachers and admin often stay in one school for much of their teaching lives resulting rigid power structures and domains which are invisible to a new teacher. I know because I stepped on the toes of a rather zealous Union Rep in my first meeting at a new school and was made to pay for the rest of the year! I also know of a secretary with an unofficial veto over which teachers to appoint for what positions.

With these peculiarities in mind let me share the points of the compass that I use when starting at a new school.

• If you can talk to a teacher who works at the school before you accept the job and find out if the school pays on time (no job is worth the stress of a school where you have to strike to get paid), what kind of overtime is expected and if the management are approachable. When you go to interview try to visit the staff room if the school has one (Ross Morrisson McGill has a nice chapter on UK staffroom politics in Teacher Toolkit: Helping You Survive the First Five Years). During the interview, if your interviewer is very stiff and serious then this is probably going to reflect the school's internal culture. But in the current climate, if you need a job this is not the biggest worry on your mind so onwards...
• Be very nice to everybody, but especially the admin team and janitors. Learn everybody's names as soon as possible. Ask for permission before arranging trips, changing materials etc from your SLT and your new colleagues.
• Do not badmouth the management to anyone! There are spies. I joke, but no, really. Some schools can be like Bridesmaids others are more like Game of Thrones. You cannot escape school politics but you can at least be diplomatic and discreet.
• Try not to get sucked into arguments about pedagogy. Every method has its advantages and disadvantages.  Take the good and leave the bad, and try not to roll your eyes too hard when they say "We are no longer going to plan anything. We will get everything we need from the children's own questions" if you are an old fashioned traditionalist sage-on-the-stage (like me), or when the Head says "I want to see students' handwriting exercises on my desk by Thursday!" when you are an avant-garde modern guide-on-the-side kind of teacher. Work out how to provide evidence you have done what has been asked and get on with doing your thing.
• Take on your fair share of extra duties and if you can, pair up with another teacher to make the workload more manageable if the project is big or long lasting.
• Avoid unproductive whinging with colleagues, and try not to spend too much time with those who do. If you want to change something, collect evidence that there is a problem and offer solutions. Be the change you want to see in the school, to paraphrase Martin Luther King. If, for example, you had little-to-no help settling in when you started, offer to give new teachers a tour of the school, explain the electronic register etc.. and if you are fortunate your kindness will be repaid many times over.