Hi, Excuse my formatting. I’m on my phone.
I’ll get right into it. Im a teacher at a primary school. I have recently joined this job and am getting the hang of things bit this is by no means my first time having a job. Anyways, today I was grading the students homework and after I was done, I went to their classroom to pass out their homework.
I usually always ask the teacher who is in the class to allow me a minute as that is the polite and professional thing to do but when I went into the class room, there was no teacher. Ind you these are 4th grade boys so the class was in complete havoc and the kids sorta just rallies around me and the ones that got a star on their homework were showing me. It was a whole chaos and I was trying to get them seated.
Then my coworker (well call her miss D) walks in with another teacher in tow and immediately starts yelling. She yells about the students bieng out of their seats then she yells at me Infront of the kids and tells me it’s my fault for disturbing her class and that I now need to "deal with them myself". With that she picks up her bag and stomps out of the class room.
Now after the first second of shock, I immediately got the class settled again and went to the teachers lounge, where she was and I was like "hey listen, I didn’t know you were teaching that class course the class was empty but I’m still sorry and Ive got the kids settled so you can go resume the lesson.
She immediately again starts saying that she despises teachers who think they can interrupt other teachers lesson and how now she won’t go back and I need to take over her class now.
This is where I might be the asshole. After I realised she just wasn’t willing to listen, I just sat down in the teachers lounge and started doing my other work. She tried saying that I needed to go to her class now or else she’d complain to the supervisor. But literally what was she gonna say? I threw a tantrum cause a teacher came in while I wasn’t even in my class? So I stayed out and ignored her.
She stayed fuming and for the rest of the period, she refused to enter the class room but stayed across the hallway making sure that none of the kids left the classroom.
I just
want to know if what I did was wrong and sole possible advice on how to proceed forward in this situation.
Some sidenote: That teacher is considerably older than me. And she has been teaching in that school for a while so there is also a matter of seniority. Also this is not in the U.S
NTA
Why did you nickname her miss D if you weren’t going to call her that a second time? Asking for a friend.
Idk lol, I just wrote this down super stressed and don’t pay much attention to this.
Info: Why are people just leaving the children unattended?
Unless I’m mistaken, you also left the children unattended?
ESH. The children are the priority and NEITHER of you put them first! You should have made a professional complaint about her behavior AFTER finishing the lesson! You put those kids in the middle of this petty nonsense and that is NOT okay!
I agree with you. It’s not about OP taking over the lesson but they shouldn’t leave them unsupervised. An admin should have been called. If something awful happened, it could have been career ending for them.
She’s a terrible teacher. She tried to blame you to save face with the other teacher in tow.
You did the right thing by not taking over the class. Personally, I would tell the principal what happened as soon as possible and ask for advice and guidance. This lets the principal know what happened from your side.
I plan to let her know, first thing tomorrow
I mean her reaction was more than needed. But did you need to interrupt a different teacher’s lesson to pass out their homework? I guess all my teachers always just waited until it was their own lesson instead of taking time away from them. I also would not leave the kids alone but that’s just me.
NTA, This teacher sounds like a piece of work. No wonder those kids were chaotic, sounds like she doesn’t have very much control as a teacher. She was acting like a child and you did the right thing by not giving in to her tantrum.
A class can be left alone for few minutes if you know they will act appropriately. She obviously doesn’t know her class very well.
NTA. Sounds like she is incapable of doing her job and has no business being in education. Hopefully she gets fired.
NTA. WTF? Those kids were unsupervised for the rest of the period? What kind of school is this? Supervisor needs to hear this.
You need directions rules on how to hand back homework.
INFO – why would you ever go into another teacher’s class? Why wouldn’t you just distribute the graded homework when you see these kids again? What even is this homework and how does it relate to the class you walked into? This scenario doesn’t make sense to me.