Wednesday, February 06, 2008

All Chiefs, No Indians . . .


International schools staff through "job fairs" held (primarily) in February. A colleague of mine (who I like VERY much) was planning on attending the Job Fair this past weekend. She is looking for a new experience and has been on the international circuit for some time now. I must say that I have been surprised by all the tension at the school and naively thought that it would be a more nurturing environment. I mentioned that another school might provide a healthier setting but she filled me in. . .

She said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that in a school we are ALL leaders. We are ALL educated people. We are ALL capable so there is a lot of strife going on because we can ALL do it (whatever "it" is). In order to have a pleasant work situation, there should be 1 leader and lots of followers.

Like they say, "Too many cooks spoil the broth."

Help . . .

1 comment:

Linda O said...

I have worked in three different school districts in California, about 5 different schools and substituted in many others at the beginning of my teaching career. I believe all schools are dysfunctional,yet all contain incredibly hard working people. The problem is there are no easy answers in education, no one way to teach, there are as many ways to teach as there are students in your class. The tension at St. Dom's does not seem high to me, although the changes have many people rattled. I thought there would be more comaraderie, but we all come from different places.