Punishment may not be the best phrase, but there are so many times that leaders in schools use their great teachers which are only justified because they’re ‘good’ teachers.
Here are some things I’ve heard about:
- Always taking visitors to their classroom
- Ensuring Ofsted go to their classroom
- Putting a ‘naughty’ student in their group because ‘they’ll deal with them’
- Giving them ‘bottom’ sets as they can ‘teach them’
- Making them lead things (on the same teaching hours as ‘not so great’ teachers)
- Mentioning their name all the time in meetings ( once or twice is nice, more than that is just embarrassing)
- Saying ‘Well they get good results…..’ for justifying an action that isn’t related to results, involving that teacher
- Always involving them in whole school initiatives as they’ll ‘do it best’
- Assuming they’ll be happy to always go above and beyond without recompense
- Giving them the jobs/tasks/classes/rooms/resources that others wouldn’t want because ‘they’ll cope’
- Keep being pushed to take more responsibility even though they just want to be a classroom teacher
So if you’re a leader in a school, think carefully how you treat your ‘great’ teachers. Giving some teachers more to do because they’re ‘good’ may not be the best way to manage them.
missdcoxblog 
Interesting reading and would love to show this to SLT in my school.
Unfortunately, I feel this echoes my position exactly at the moment. After being given my timetable for next academic year, I have been trusted with two A Level groups (RS and Sociology) as the lead teacher on them both. As well as that, I will be teaching GCSE Music (my specialism but one that I’m moving away from and more into the Humanities area, something I am intensely passionate about) and KS3 History AND KS3 Drama!
I took on RS and Sociology to help cement a position for the future (after moving to a Maternity cover in Music) and also to help the school (both RS teachers left mid-year). History is a natural progression into more Humanities related teaching, but to add another subject (without being spoken to prior to distribution of timetables and without any expertise in Drama) seems like such a kick in the teeth!
And of course, the inevitable drop-ins and expectation of many of the wider responsibilities (without a TLR I hasten to add!) seem to top it off!
I cannot emphasise how significant your blog feels to me right now.
NB- Please excuse my desire to remain anonymous, have to be careful of any prying eyes!
Reblogged this on The Echo Chamber.
Whilst I whole heartedly agree with this, I think that more and more schools will have to run on the good will of staff due to poor funding. Some schools are running on such a tight budget and timetable that they can’t afford to even offer an extra hour.
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