Got a little situation of my own, let me know if I haven't swapped out all the British words:
I'm a substitute math teacher at a high school. I like to bounce around different schools to avoid the planning, marking and data collection burden of the job and not get worn down by badly behaved children. However I care about my job and I will take on responsibility for long term contracts, so the school I joined in September liked me and kept me on full time for the entire year. Because it's one of the first good schools I've worked it, I was happy to do all the planning/marking/data though it was hard given a 90 minute commute each way.
So they finally advertise my job this month and since it's going well I apply for it. I worked really fucking hard on the interview lesson and I interview really well somehow for an nerdy introvert, so I got the job. They scheduled the interview for the same day as parent's evening for the 14 year olds, for the first time in my career I have 100% attendance and have 32 appointments actually turn up. A few grill me on homework, the one badly behaved student in the class and why their child is under performing (they are put into classes based on ability, so I have the 60th to 90th best students in the year group out of about 120), I thought it went OK considering my migraine from interview stress.
At the end of the next day, the final day before a week break, I'm called into the principal's office and told that they had three 'independent' complaints about me at parents evening and are withdrawing the job offer due to potential professional misconduct (lying to parents), which they can do since the offer was provisional based on getting good references and they are counting themselves as a reference. The principal wouldn't hear my side as "I'm just the messenger" and I had to search the school for the head of maths and the year group to explain my side so I wouldn't get fired for lying.
I fucked up not having a detailed spreadsheet with the homeworks I set on it, then giving some students bad reports for homework based on what I could find in their books and bad test results pointing to poor effort on revision. I had also set some homework which just read "revise for X test" which doesn't leave a paper trail so the parents thought I didn't set any. I knew it was a problem, admitted that to parents (so I lied how?) and told every parent I am going to set homeworks on a website in future so it's tracked better and they can see themselves what has been set. Apparently I didn't explain it very well after working a 13+ hour day with an interview, not being prepared properly because all my prep time that week went into the interview.
So I've spent my weeks break making a detailed homework spreadsheet and making sure the books are marked up to date. I've no idea if they are going to tell me on Monday that I'm fired or what they will do about the complaints. Looks like I'll be maintaining spreadsheets and marked books if they keep me on and not spending as much time planning quality lessons!
Anyone know any alternative careers which use a postgraduate degree in teaching Mathematics and 6 years teaching experience? It makes you REALLY good at Microsoft Office(Powerpoint and Excel). I also have an undergraduate degree in Computing but I can only really read code, I sucked at it.
