The Wonderful World of Becca

Thursday, August 06, 2009

Frustrations

My job really frustrates me sometimes… it seems my company give and take away however they please. This is my first ‘proper job’, so I don’t know what the ‘norm’ is or what procedure should be or whatever.

Anyways, earlier this term I was asked to stop going to teach at one of my SoundStarts, they wanted to put another member of staff in there are part of his personal development. I was a little gutted, as this happened to be my favourite SS, however I totally understood and accepted it. A week or so later I was told I’d have to go back there as the other member of staff couldn’t teach at the moment. So I went back, after the children having been told I wasn’t coming back anymore. Then week by week a member of senior management would say to me ‘oh, I should know soon if you’re gonna have to keep doing that SS’. I got really frustrated coz of a) the children needing stability, but b) is it really fair for them to say ‘go here, now don’t go, now go back, but wait, you may not need to go anymore’… I just feel completely used by situations like that.

Then you get the case of sessional staff having work taken away for them to make up the hours for salaried staff. That irritates me… I mean fair enough if it’s just a few hours, or one small school from one member of staff, but when it’s a whole load of hours taken from one individual to be given to another, it just seems so unjust. As one colleague put it, ‘it’s like thieving from the rich to give to the poor’. And I totally agree with her. Then you get multiple schools taken from multiple teachers to give to one teacher… I mean, if you need to take that much work away, did you really need to employ a full time member of staff? I think not.

Then there’s the case of ‘oh, well, she doesn’t know it yet, but she’s gonna be doing that teaching in September’. Ok, fair enough if it’s the instrument you actually play and you’ve got time for the work, but hello… why put someone who can’t even play the instrument into the school to teach it… it’s like ‘well, she can play cello, so yeah, she’ll teach double bass now too’. This poor woman doesn’t even play double bass AT ALL. It’s ludicrous… what does it say about the quality of our teaching? What message is this giving out, regardless of who actually knows the whole truth of it all? I realise it’s personal development in a sense, like me teaching SoundStart Clarinet & Sax, but a cellist, who doesn’t play bass at all, picking up a bunch of paired and individual bass teaching… what’s that all about?

Can they do this? I don’t know… and it leads me to question… my ‘favourite’ thing at the moment!!