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Zvi returns (#66) and asks again whether he has the right or the duty to
terminate the employment of an ineffective teacher, and the discussion
seems to be veering away from the 'hands on management' to the halakha.
Before it goes off completely into orbit, I would respectfully submit the
following comments.
There is no doubt that managing a school means that now and again you have
to terminate "ineffective" teachers. (One of the best English school
Principals - non-Jewish - once wrote that the thing that he felt most
guilty about in his career was his failure to dismiss bad teachers.) But
(as I tried to indicate obliquely on lookjed) life is not as simple as
that. My experience is that really ineffective teachers who actually
should not be in the profession move on of their own accord, or drift from
school to school. It would be unusual for a teacher who was really bad to
be in the same place for twenty years. That puzzled me about your
question, and I noticed that it puzzled one or two other respondents.
So it seems that something else is going on here.
Does the teacher harbor a hidden resentment about something? (Among the
commonest: Lack of recognition, lack of promotion, not approving of the
way things are being run in the school ) That can turn teachers into
'passive - aggressive' mode, or into "Now-I-just-come-and-do-my-job
and-go-home" mode. Is there a situation in the teacher's domestic life
that is draining his spirits?
Further, *how* is the teacher 'ineffective' ? (Who says he is? You?
students? other staff? parents?) We haven't heard this, and perhaps the
discussion would benefit from hearing some more details.
Finally, I wrote in a previous submission (#66), a line that accidentally
'dropped off' the end of the email -- 'The message [for our schools] is --
organize, organize, organize!' To that should be added -- 'and
professionalise, professionalise, professionalise..!'
Have a good summer, y'all!
Paul Shaviv, Headmaster
CHAT - Community Hebrew Academy of Toronto
200 Wilmington Avenue,
Downsview, Ont M3H 5J8</HTML>
