Back up! Back up! What do you mean it's Week 3?

The start of this term has seriously flown by. I can't believe it is the end of Week 3 already and this is my first blog. Phew...I guess that's what happens with three new subjects to prepare for.

I'm here to blog today because something is eating away at me (from the inside out). My former "best-team-teaching-partner-of-the-year" is becoming very difficult to team teach with. This year, there is just the two of us. This year she is Team Leader. This year, she is teaching me how to suck eggs and it sucks! She is trying to do everything by the book. She is particularly conscientious and wants to do a good job, but I am feeling that it is at the expense of our relationship and compatibility as team teachers. I used to love her flexibility, empathy and sympathy for the kids, willingness to bend when situations dictated. We were similar in those ways and it worked. And we had the horrible third wheel to blame everything else on, when things went wrong. Now there are just the two of us. There is no shirking the blame. She has spent a lot of time telling me what not to do...and it's not working for me, Dr. Phil!

I think she's picking up the vibe of how I feel. I certainly haven't been backwards in showing my surprise at some of the decisions she has made, however, at the same time, I don't think I have been explicit enough in stating what it really is that is upsetting me. Nay, frustrating me. Given the hot, hot days we have had in un-air conditioned classrooms with 42 students lately, I expect she just puts it down to me feeling hot and tired, as is sometimes the case when we return to work. In fact, it is quite the opposite. As my previous posts show, I was so keen to start back this year. I have done so much preparation for my Year 10 classes and I feel that I am really teaching them well this year, not just killing time like I have sometimes felt I was doing in the past. I know I need to talk to her about this. And I also appreciate that she has co-ordinators on her back telling her what is and isn't okay. What really irritates me is that I feel many of my decisions are being undermined in the classroom, I feel that I have to run everything by her first, I feel like she is treating me like an idiot as if I haven't been picking up on the nuances going on around me.

Today was a perfect example of the new SK shining through, rather than the old one. It was STIFLING hot in our classroom. It was Period 6 and we had the students working in their groups in 4 separate action stations. The reading group were trying to find a cool, quiet place whilst 30 other students were talking around them. I thought it would be okay for them to go outside to read, right beneath the windows, in the shade, just outside our classroom. Afterall, we wanted them to be reading and there was very little of that going on given the noise and the heat. In the pattern that I am becoming accustomed to, I ran this by SK. She said no. She'd already told them no. So the answer was no. Afterall, she said, there are no chairs out there. This is not the SK I know. She would have been the first to take her class out into the cool breeze and shade before she became team leader. Grrrr! Those poor damn kids sitting in a baking classroom with no reprieve! It really made me cross! :( I felt like I had no avenue to challenge this decision which i strongly opposed. Afterall, SHE'S THE TEAM LEADER, which makes her the boss of the world, apparently.

This is not something I want to mull over and build up. I have resisted confiding in other teachers because SK and I are probably the closest of all my colleagues at work, and I don't want her to hear that I have been talking about her to other people. I have never really liked her conservative, rule abiding side (should I say, inflexible?). Now that it is at the forefront, I'm disliking it even more. We are both 4th year out teachers and I have always been more confident and involved around the school than she is, so I don't appreciate her taking control over me as though I am a worse teacher than her. I think that's where my real issue lies. I am competitive with her, and this always worked in my favour because I was doing more and had more special payment positions etc. than her, better classroom control, more respect from students in the past and now the tables have turned and I am not liking that. (You know when you feel your blood boil when you are blogging that you have hit on the real angst you are trying to express). On that note, another 4th year out teacher who started at the same time as us is Year 7 Co-ordinator this year (more by default and pushing than anything) and I am feeling like I'm getting left behind as just a classroom teacher and lunchtime activities co-ordinator. I don't want to have to go down the disciplinarian/ co-ordinator path to get taken seriously in this job. Unfortunately, that's very much how this school operates.

Dr. Phil and other readers of my blog (coz y'all know Dr. Phil reads my blog, right?) what should I do with my team teacher dilemma and career path?

M x