Resign?

To resign or not to resign, that is the question. Except, it isn’t, because if you’re reading this on Friday at 3:30 when it’s released, it’s already too late: the resignation deadline has passed.

Teachers have to give at least a half term’s notice to end their contract¹, and now, with only one half term left, it’s too late. Essentially, it’s two months notice to go at the end of the Autumn and Spring terms, and three months for the summer, which is why it works out to be half term. I think those timescales are pretty fair to be honest, as anything shorter risks screwing the students over.

I’ve worked with people in the past who have waited until the last moment to hand in their notice². This includes people who are retiring, have known their retiring and have still waited just as a final ‘fuck you’ to the school and management. These people are always leaving under something of a cloud, but I still don’t understand the reasoning.

The only people you are screwing over are your colleagues and the students. If you hate management, fair enough, especially if you feel they’ve treated you badly, but that isn’t a good enough reason to screw over the students.

If you leave resigning as late as possible, you are limiting the pool of people who can apply for, and potentially be appointed to, the vacancy you just created. Anyone in a post can’t resign now and won’t be available until at least Christmas. That would leave student teachers looking for their first job. In shortage areas like Maths, any student who is any good has almost certainly got a job already, so you’d be left with people who either don’t interview well or aren’t actually much good.

Harsh? Maybe, but that’s my experience. I’ve talked about interviews before³, so I won’t re-tread that but instead lets talk about what happens when someone resigns without allowing sufficient time for an appropriate replacement to be found.

So, a member of staff has resigned on the last possible day and the scramble to replace begins. All those kids – don’t forget the average core⁴ subject teacher sees somewhere between 120 and 180 students and non-core considerably more – now in a period of uncertainty where they have no clue who will be teaching them next year.

Maybe these students get selected for the dreaded interview lesson where their favourite candidate⁵ doesn’t get appointed. Now they are dreading September, and the new member of staff is cooked before they begin. To be honest, this is a problem whenever you appoint, but it’s considerably worse when you don’t have much of a choice and you have to appoint.

There are other issues with appointing late, especially if your school does something we experimented with a few years ago.

Essentially, our head decided to roll the timetable up straight after May half term, so essentially year 7 become year 8, year 8 become year 9 and so on. New timetables were issued, and this is now the timetable until next May half term. This seems like a great idea in principle: option subjects get a half term more with their students, so it should improve results in those subjects.

However, when we did it⁶, it soon became obviously a massively flawed idea. Firstly, in the build up to May half term, all heads of department were pouring over timetables and set lists, rather than looking after their exam classes, which is really what they should have been doing. Secondly, you are timetabling classes where there might not be a teacher, or the one who has the class is leaving. Think of the impact of that on ASD students, or vulnerable students who need a trusted adult. What happens to them? They get used to someone’s way of teaching, and then a couple of months later they have someone completely new – it can be very discombobulating⁷.

Every year we did this, we had a new timetable usually by the end of September, or in December, which always caused more disruption – to staff, but also to students, which is pretty unforgivable in my book. I still believe it is a shit idea.

There is always disruption when staff leave a school, especially if the staff are well liked and/or respected. I’m not entirely sure how we can mitigate for that, but we can try to help students manage it. Support for new members of staff is usually freely given, but how about support for students? The SEND team do tremendous work here, but what of those who are not SEND but are struggling with the loss of their favourite teacher⁸/person who didn’t shout at them⁹/reasonably decent bloke¹⁰? When we leave schools, it is almost a bereavement for some students so maybe we should support as such.

Of course, time heals everything and hopefully the new people become the favourite or most respected teacher. In writing this, I was reminded of a leaving speech someone gave that really stuck with me. Given I heard this over twenty years ago, it really stuck with me. Following way too much time googling, I think I found it, and this is the passage that stuck with me¹¹:

Take a bucket and fill it with water,
Put your hand in it up to the wrist,
Pull it out and the hole that’s remaining
Is a measure of how you’ll be missed.

(Indispensable Man by Saxon White Kessinger)

It’s half term now, so switch the laptop off, put the red¹² pen down, get yourself outside and relax.

Until next time.

FOOTNOTES

1. More if you’re a headteacher, but then that’s a ‘you’ problem. Sucker. ↩︎
2. And to be clear, I am not talking about people who managed to get a different job this week, or have other reasons to leave. This is specifically about people who choose not to resign until the last possible minute – you know, selfish pricks. ↩︎
3. Handily available here: Interviews – David Watkins ↩︎
4. Maths, English and Science ↩︎
5. The one who has zero control, zero command of subject knowledge but told a few jokes so he was ace. ↩︎
6. I forget how many times we tried it, but I think it was at least three and probably more. It was never smooth. ↩︎
7. It’s taken me nearly nine months to get that word into this blog. Get in! ↩︎
8. Just about every teacher is someone’s favourite. ↩︎
9. A low bar I know, but it is pretty essential to not lose your shit every single lesson. ↩︎
10. Or woman. I’m equal opportunities when it comes to being decent, but I really couldn’t figure out how to word it. I’m tired, okay? ↩︎
11. The poem is ‘Indispensable Man’ by Saxon White Kessinger (yes, worth crediting twice) and it’s a beautiful piece about the transient nature of our lives. I found it on this website, where you can read the whole thing: “Indispensable Man” by Saxon White Kessinger ↩︎
12. Or green or purple or tartan or whatever the fuck colour SLT decides on this week. ↩︎