ABSTRACT
Parents have been banned from our school trips because of their swearing and bad behaviour.
(A junior school teacher) Meeting, and learning about, your future colleagues is part of the exciting and daunting task of beginning work in a new place. In our context it applies to students on teaching practice, newly qualified teachers, and experienced teachers changing post. Later in this book you will read about a Headteacher’s perspective. Here the intention is to see things from the point of view of an NQT. Let us first of all imagine that our newcomer received, in her briefing documents, the following sheet (which closely mirrors, apart from the names, an authentic list):
Staffing and organisation
Teaching staff
Non-teaching staff
Such a list might provoke many questions: • Who is male and who is female? • What is, or are, LSS, MSA, SA? • Do class numbers refer to rooms, or ages, or are they random? • How do you pronounce Vaziljevic? • Why do the Head and Deputy have two initials and everyone else
only one? • What is ‘Off-site education’? • Do I get stock from H.Hobbes or M.Biddle? • Are there two posts for History and Geography? • Does the Special Needs teacher have a class? • Who looks after English, S.Feldman or F.Padley? • Which cleaner will do my room? Some of these questions may be important; some may be trivial. But how does one tell the difference? In any event, is it more important to get to know the children or the staff?
