Dear Headteacher, Thank you for the kind feedback you gave me on my lesson observation that took place two weeks before the end of the school year when I and my students are at our most exhausted. I welcome the fact that whereas all my other observations this year have been good to outstanding, you still deem me as requires improvement. Although you dont intend on acting on this before the summer holiday, action will be taken in the new academic year, which presumably means you will not consider me to go through threshold as an M6 teacher which would require you to pay me more. Advertisement I am grateful for your guidance regarding my learning objectives – this was helpful although you did fail to spot the subtle differentiation I had put in place, dismissing the eight sheets that I had carefully prepared, each with individual scaffolds to help students achieve their next step. Implying that my outcomes are too simplistic, your comments that students carry out science investigations all the time and therefore couldnt possibly be progressing, just revealed an inherent lack of understanding of my subject. Who knows why science devotes a whole 25% of a GCSE to that skill when any monkey should be able to do it? Despite previous assessments and my work scrutiny, you feel I am not adequately getting students to respond to my feedback – a point you couldnt let rest and patronisingly pronounced that I have been told to act on many times before. Beyond this being an appraisal target that all members of the science department were assigned, its also simply untrue; feedback has been recognised previously as one of my strengths. You held up one honourably unnamed member of staff in praise – you had checked one set of her books last week and she had more marking in there than me. But there was no mention that you were checking a set of books for a group she sees once a fortnight compared to the group I see six times a fortnight . You also failed to find a copy of my most recent work scrutiny (what used to be a useful tool to identify good practice is now a bi-annual beating that ensures we are pushing ourselves to the edge with marking in fear of being held to account for slacking). Had this come to hand, it would have highlighted my efforts to engage the students in responding to feedback so its curious that you misplaced this key bit of evidence. It feels like youre trying to subvert my appraisal like you did last year and the year before so I cant progress through threshold. Between you and me, I think you are a bully. You are the only person with the ability to back me into a corner and leave me inarticulate and shaken. You phrase your reflective questions in a patronising and personal way – Id expect those mistakes to be made by an NQT but you have been teaching for six years and it is just not good enough. You dont listen to me when I try and explain myself. If I was to act this way towards a child, I would be gutted at the affect you have on my confidence and motivation. I know I dont help myself by turning to a waffling jelly every time you step a foot into my classroom but at the end of the day you are the person whose opinion I value the most and the fact that you are dismissing me as requires improvement and moving the goalposts every time I make some improvement leaves me with little hope for career progression. What I really want you to do is trust me. Trust that you and I are singing from the same song sheet. Trust my appraisers and my head of department that they are making the right judgements about me – that I am genuinely doing as good a job I can and not urge them to change their judgements on my targets like you did last year and the year before. Understand that with a 45-hour-a-fortnight timetable, I make the odd mistake and have the odd bad lesson; I am not trying to pull the wool over your eyes or being lazy or intentionally sabotaging the learning in my lessons. And the last really galling point – there are plenty of teachers who have gone through the threshold in earlier years who have never had to pull rabbits out of hats and who are currently contributing far less to the education of the young people at the school than I am and are being paid a lot more than me and always will be. Fair performance-related pay? I dont think so. Yours, Unhappy Science Teacher This weeks Secret Teacher works in the North West England Follow us on Twitter via @GuardianTeach. Join the Guardian Teacher Network for lesson resources, comment and job opportunities, direct to your inbox.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 08:54:26 +0000
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