I had no idea when I turned up that I was going to be teaching complex students with so many diagnoses and trauma. I thought I was going to be teaching mainstream classes. I was given an area outside of my training to teach in. I thought I would do the work in the evenings to prepare, but that came a distant second to behavioural management.
I sought assistance from my Head of Department many times. I didn't realise until later that I should have been documenting her not helping me. But I didn't get what was going on for a while, and when I arrived she was away for a couple of days.
The issues began when the Head of Department demanded that I teach at a Year 8 standard (these students are between Grade 2-4 in literacy). So they are old enough to be in Year 8 but they are not cognitively capable of doing anything of that year. Except some of the students with Autism and on the Spectrum, who are only interested in one area. I say let them do it in their area - and the Head of Department said no they have to learn to broaden their horizon which is a seriously unevolved neurotypical thing to say. You could seat my brother in a desk for 20 years, he just wouldn't do it.
So last week I had the difficult class on my own - Head of Department asked me who were the four most difficult students and told me she would have them removed to buddy classes. I was so relieved. Then the students turned up for class, one of them a male student who had behaved in a threatening and intimidating manner towards me the week before. The Head of Department turned up, walked in to the classroom, laughed at me, her phone rang, and she left answering. Not really feeling faculty support.
So when I got this class I was told not to approach X student with a red card on his desk because he can have a meltdown and have the building evacuated. Then I was informed that sometimes he doesn't take or use his cards. So really set up for success there. So I wrote a lot of notes of the students conditions/traumas/diagnoses down.
I was doing okay until the Head of Department returned and demanded I teach at a Year 8 level - to kids in Year 8 but substantially lower - so I was really stuck - I couldn't just ignore her as her staff room literally leads off my teaching room, now I can think enough to either to quit, ask her to show me how it is down or just refuse to do something so incredibly stupid and get fired. Or thinking about it I could have written an email Ccing everyone in and asking for a clarification - "I am a bit confused when you said I was to teach at a Year 8 level to this particular class, and keep them in if they don't do enough writing? Do you really want me to do that? Aren't they Year 2/4 and in need of one on one attention?" One of the case managers aid to me if you can keep him in that class that will be a big achievement. All preferable options to what I then did which was try to teach at a Grade 8 level, and the class resisted this, and then one of the boys behaved in a threatening and intimidating manner. The Head of Department told me I was to have "High Expectations" to keep in any student who didn't complete enough work for a detention. So punish kids for whom literacy of all forms is torture with detention until they finish being tortured. But it was just a mindgame.
So I have about 25-30 days in the classroom - I am a provisional teacher - and you know this class was a little too hard for a newbie. Also the class is meant to have a teacher's aide at all times. I didn't have a teacher's aide for one the subjects that I had. A lot of them need one on one to get start in their writing, to remind them to sit in their seat, to stop them from throwing things at other students and to prevent them from leaving the classroom. There is a huge amount of anxiety around learning, writing and struggling with feelings of being dumb. I was doing so well with them. I brought in art and craft activities to engage them. Rewrote feature articles with their classmates were in them so it had some relevance in their lives. Like I came up with some great stuff to work around their challenges/disabilities/traumas/emotional dysregulation
So she wanted me to enact the behavioural management plan with kids I had been told not to directly approach because they have serious emotional regulation issues. Bit of a Catch 22.
So as the Head of Department wouldn't assist me. I found out about a mentorship program. I then asked if I could have a mentor. So she said she doesn't believe in fluff, or saying positive things. It didn't matter because she had the goods for that class. So she was brutally honest about my set up, and I typed that up and it worked a treat next lesson. She said I was great with the content and engaging the class once I got settled - you see it is a bit different when you are a relief teacher you have to do it differently. She's been at the one school for a long time, but it really helped. I felt so much relief that there was some assistance available. Then she said I could have someone come for their period to assess my teaching of the more challenging class and I said great - usually you want to have your best game on for an observation, and you best lesson planned but hey I was desperate, and if they could give me any hints to help me manage better I was for it. It could make me a better teacher and help my students. So the woman who came to observe said to me was it okay that she was there. I said absolutely I was so grateful that she had come. So she didn't cope with the class. She interrupted me several and yelled at them (which you CANNOT do with these students), and she left the class early. She wrote a positive appraisal and then said she had no idea on how to manage the behaviours and referred me back to my Head of Department. It was after she left that the male student behaved in a threatening, aggressive and intimidating manner. And it was such a shame because even though his behaviour was totally inappropriate they should not have been asked to do that work.
Anyway I got upset after the male student behaved that way. So I was thinking of when I had been punched in the face at the other school (to which my analysis was finally - instead of ringing the office I should have rung the police) This was misquoted as I was going to ring the police if any students got in my space. So the Head of Department - not asking if I was okay, if I needed any help, did I need some time out - bailed me up and told me off about multple things - she never spoke to me that way when other staff members were around. So I had to defend that I made a comment and there was a context to it. Anyway it was all gaslighting I realise now, and not really good gaslighting. Luckily for me she is a pretty dumb person about what she was doing. She didn't say things in front of other people. But she wasn't so smart either. She didn't give me a teacher's aide and there was a lot of concern over that.
The Head of Department told me to stop asking for help - after I got two class observations.
On that last day I was there, when the Head of Department told me she was going to take out the four most challenging students out to buddies classes, didn't then turn up to laugh at me then leave. Well I cried after that to another teacher, who took over the next class of mine with the very challenging students, and she bailed me up and told me to stop asking for help. She talked to the class and told them off in a very calm and professional manner in stark contrast to screaming at them before I walked in on my own. And asked me to write a list of the "Bad kids" in front of said students, which I did, and which of course she didn't even pick up because she didn't care. It was an act for the teacher that had come to help me.
On top of that everyone kept giving me different directions. You can't talk to this student, as this student doesn't talk to anyone, but you must make that student do X. And you must use behavioural plan X.
I was told to ring or contact the case managers of certain students - but I didn't know who that case manager was (like one was actually sitting next to me) and some of the student's had the Head of Department as their case manager.
So the problem was there was no winning in this situation. And at first I thought was acting a bit odd, but then it dawned on me that she was bullying me, some of it was a bit pathetic, but some of it did really upset me and I spent a fair bit of time in the women's toilets crying because I didn't want to get punched in the face like I did in the last school. I had developed really good rapport with the kids until the Head of Department told me to punish them with Year 8 work. Which she didn't say anything about when we were all mutually sent Grade 4 work for the Year 8s that can't do Year 8 work. So it was all a set up. Sadly I didn't work this out in time.
I then stayed up on Tuesday night to write up lesson plans, get resources ready, and drove them in at 5.30am so I didn't have to see anyone. So Wednesday's classes were immaculately prepared, I got a shock when I went back on Friday and they had not moved an mm. I got a text and a phone call saying can you email the stuff in, and I thought oh they will get my second call telling them I am emailing stuff in (then I was told that to cover up bullying if someone is friend's with another teacher, they will cover it up - so should have rung them on Wednesday - but I did email it all in and I will get a copy of all that off the school computer before I hand it in).
So I did lessons for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and on Friday I stayed up most of the night doing them - and I should not have - because they probably didn't print it out and give it to the supervising teacher. I printed it all out and dropped it off at 5.30am in the morning, and was really shocked to see the Wednesday work still there, not used Wednesday or Thursday. So that was weird.
Other interesting challenges included:
I went to observe a class of student with less disabilities, trauma and challenges, and they had three adults in the room. They said to me we don't have the challenges that you have of course.
Some anxiety is situationally appropriate.
I had technology failures.
My sign in wouldn't work.
The electronic roll would have students not on it that were in the class - I was told this was strange and not really possible. But it happened.
My presence on the network got deleted at one point.
I had room changes with emotionally volatile students who are difficult to manage if they are in their routine and almost impossible when you take them out of their routines.
The photocopier wouldn't work for me.
The Head of Department kept bailing me up to have a go at me, but always alone.
I was teaching a line with challenging students with no teacher's aide.
I asked for help from one of the senior people and she told me you get your teacher's aide to do that and I told her that I didn't have a teacher's aide and she looked at me skeptically. I was like it really isn't even worth talking to you if you don't even believe me.
Then one of the younger teachers told me to just teach this content, at least this senior teacher said to her ahhhhhhh that will be a challenge with that group to get that much done.
Most spares I had where I could have prepared for classes I ended up doing supervisions.
I got comments from a teacher who said you asked me where that room was yesterday - on my second day.
I was totally lost a lot of the time.
I couldn't find my way around, and everyone I showed the school map interpreted it differently. Told me to go different ways.
LUnch duties were a matter of Zen - I would go on one point where I thought my lunch duty was and I would be sent somewhere else by another teacher, and then somewhere else by another teacher, some of whom said to me they were not really sure where their lunch duties were either.
I was rushing from one place to another.
I had to have lots of physical activities for students with low literacies so I had heaps to carry around.
If one student went off - well that was the end of the lesson so I had to rejuggle all the content.
Some days they were just all over the place.
Towards the end I actually shouted at several classes. I had had enough and I never wanted to be a shouting teacher.
I became more and more nervous about what the Head of Department would pull next. I just didn't know what the next set up would be.
The Head of Department would not give me information on the cases she was managing so I didn't know how to approach those students. I have several volatile students prone to violence so I was shooting in the dark with these other students. A couple were obviously trauma but I didn't want to invade their space but I didn't want to ignore them either. The students that I got detailed knowledge about I made special lessons/accommodations for them.
I also got in trouble for doing too much work, which was at once so bizarre and so hilarious. Like seriously? I have such a complex class/group of students - hell yes I am turning up at 5am so I am TOTALLY prepared before I walked into that classroom. They said just teach the Curriculum - but they give me all their different abilities, cognitive challenges and disabilities, and their lack of emotional regulation and their traumas - but yeah I am going to be able to fit those kids into little boxes of goddamned awfully boring content. So I jazzed it up with ways for them to engage with stuff that they might enjoy -
And no one in their first year out of teaching is going to get the life/balance thing right - if you think you did you have been teaching too long to remember your first year. Not realistic.
One teacher told me that she refuses to go into a classroom that one of my male students is in. That she won't teach him anymore. She is a totally brilliant and experienced teacher, and I sat in on her class - and it was as loud and as rambunctious as mine - so I felt good I was getting them to do quite a bit of work at times - which they saw as fun - so as far as they were concerned they were not doing much work. I wish I had known I could trust her but at that point I didn't want to tell anyone I was being bullied and that person be the bully's best friend.
Lessons learnt:
If they ask you to do the impossible strategically brain storm with many people how to manage this.
Refuse and get the sack - it's better than what happened.
Email the group and ask exactly how am I meant to do this?
Or email the group just confused - just clarifying - do you really want me to do this?
Keep sending request via email for information - you have a record of what information they are denying you.
Pretend to be dumb - this is Australia - what the f*ck were you thinking ms spock! BE f*ckING DUMB. This is Australia and being dumb is important. You don't want to rock the dumb people's boat.
Never take a contract without knowing what it is - just miss out.
Run and save yourself! Sometimes it is the only thing you can do.
It is never a wise idea to tough it out in these situations - because you could get seriously injured.
My commitment to non violent civil disobedience is pretty strong.
Sometimes the stupid people are too stupid to deal with.
I need to get smarter dealing with the stupid people.
I am not a small child with no options anymore.
If other teachers refuse to teach a class it is a red flag that you REALLY need to pay attention to.
