Dealing with Difficult Teachers

Todd Whitaker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317820727
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book provides tips and strategies to help school leaders improve, neutralize, or eliminate resistant and negative teachers. Learn how to handle staff members who gossip in the teacher's lounge, consistently say "it won't work" when any new idea is suggested, send an excessive number of student to your office for disciplinary reasons, undermine your efforts toward school improvement, or negatively influence other staff members. Don't miss the revised and expanded third edition of this best-seller!

Part 1 The Principal and the Difficult Teacher

DOI: 10.4324/9781315819723-1

1 What Is a Difficult Teacher?

DOI: 10.4324/9781315819723-2

Think of the most difficult teachers you know. What do you think of? In other words, what adjectives would you use to describe them? What characteristics come to mind? In asking many groups of principals, superintendents, teachers, and students this question, several words and phrases keep coming up. Terms and phrases that are frequently used to describe these difficult teachers include:

• ♦ lazy
• ♦ negative
• ♦ resistant to change
• ♦ boring
• ♦ negative leader
• ♦ belligerent
• ♦ inflexible
• ♦ back stabber
• ♦ domineering
• ♦ stubborn
• ♦ don’t like kids
• ♦ don’t like their job
• ♦ don’t like themselves
• ♦ counting the days until they retire
• ♦ counting the days until school ends (and it is early October!)
• ♦ rude
• ♦ cannot get along with others
• ♦ lectures
• ♦ argumentative
• ♦ cynical
• ♦ low student achievement

Not a real glamorous list is it?

Now ask yourself, “What is it that these people would be good at?” You do not see many of these terms on a job description, do you? The answer, of course, is that they would not be good at anything. That is why they do not quit education! There is nothing else they can do effectively either. What employer wants a lazy, negative, rude, back stabber? That is why your most challenging staff members seemingly stay in your building forever. Believe me, they are well aware of the fact that they could not be successful at any of life’s employment options.

However, before you give up hope, take another look at the list of characteristics. Does anything else come to mind? The adjectives on the list are personal traits. They all can be used to describe the personalities of negative people. If they are personal traits, however, perhaps these difficult individuals have a choice to be this way or not. It is up to them. Each one of us decides how many arguments we get in each year; each one of us chooses to be negative or positive. We all decide whether to be cynical, back-stabbing, or lazy. It is truly a personal decision. While this may sound hopeless for the people in your school, it really is a reason for optimism. Because each of these are traits that your difficult teachers choose to express, they may also be things they could choose not to express.

As an educational leader, you have the possibility to transform the most challenging faculty.

This implies that as an educational leader, you have the possibility to transform the most challenging faculty. However, no one ever said it would be easy. Let us take a look at these most difficult teachers in a different context. In a school context, what makes a teacher challenging? There are at least six general areas that may cause you to label teachers difficult. These include:

Classroom Behavior. Obviously one of the first determinants of whether someone is a difficult teacher is learning what these teachers are doing in the classroom. Are they effective in working with students on a daily basis? If the answer is no, then you must work to motivate these teachers to take a different approach in their classes.

Sometimes we feel that if a person is going to retire in three years, we can just let them go until then. This may be true in other professions. If you were the manager of a company, you could “hide” an employee for a period of time. Maybe you could reduce workload or limit contact with the customers. In education, however, the standard is much higher for one simple reason: They come in daily contact with children. Teachers’ jobs are so important that we cannot afford to allow ineffective teachers to continue carte blanche. Being an educator is too significant an occupation to allow ineffective people to remain in the profession.

It is difficult for a principal to sleep at night if even one child in school walks through that difficult teacher’s door each day. Even more unfortunately, there are few situations that involve only one child. Instead, negative teachers typically affect 25 to 150 students each school day. The standard of acceptable performance in education is higher simply because it is education. One thing to remember is this: If a teacher has approached students ineffectively for 28 consecutive years, he or she has been allowed to do so by principals for 28 consecutive years. This implies that if you are the principal you must cause ineffective teachers to change their behaviors.

Students are often willing to share feelings they have about their teachers. A principal who is accessible, visible, and a good listener can often validate observations through dialogues. Conversations with students can provide additional perspectives regarding teacher effectiveness.

There is a simple test to determine whether your teachers fit into the standard of difficult classroom teacher. You need to ask yourself whether you would want your own son or daughter in their classes. If the answer is “no,” then it should be difficult to have a clear conscience in scheduling any students into these teachers’ classrooms. The simple technique of making the measurement personal by involving your own children is a good determinant of a difficult teacher.

How teachers and all educators treat the young people they come in contact with every day is a non-negotiable measure of their effectiveness. Altering this behavior, which often has been in place for many years, can be a challenging task for the school leader.

Staff Influence. There is nothing more damaging to a school, especially one attempting to bring about positive change, than a negative teacher-leader. A negative teacher-leader is someone who cannot only fight good ideas, but—worse yet—one who can convince other teachers to be negative as well. Sometimes these teachers are not particularly poor classroom teachers. They often have some level of interpersonal skills. These interpersonal strengths often increase their level of influence. However, you must reduce the negative influence of these people, or it becomes very difficult to implement new programs or ideas. Many times if you can reduce their negative influence, then you can tolerate them in the classroom.

The challenge of reducing their influence without losing credibility with the remainder of the faculty is essential. Diminishing the relationship between the principal and this negative teacher-leader might diminish the relationship between the principal and some of the staff members who look to this negative leader for guidance. Do not allow this possibility to be a rationale for inaction. For a school to move forward in an effective direction, it is essential that the productive, positive staff members provide the momentum and direction for the school and staff. Reducing the ability of the most negative and resistant staff to cause other staff members to “drag their feet” is a critical part of this process.

For a school to move forward in an effective direction, it is essential that the productive, positive staff members provide the momentum and direction for the school and staff.

Public Perception. Everyone wants to associate with a winner. To determine whether this is true, we need only look at our local college basketball team. If the team has success, there is a much greater likelihood it has fan support, money donations, and good basketball recruits attending the school. If a team is struggling, even though it needs support more than the successful team, people tend to distance themselves from the program. In a way, the same holds true for schools. If people perceive a school as successful, parents are more likely to get involved with the school. Local businesses are much more willing to associate with the school. Thus, it is essential that there be a positive public perception of schools and teachers.

The perception of a school is often a combination of the perceptions of all of the individuals in the organization. If we have individuals who are viewed negatively by parents, central office, or the community, can have a draining effect on the entire school.

If you have staff members who continually do things that offend or incite others outside the school, it is very harmful to the credibility of the principal and of the school as a whole. Additionally, a staff member who frequently upsets others causes an increased burden on the already demanding load of the principal. Having to “mop up” after these individuals is very stressful and time-consuming. It should not occur.

As a principal, the majority of parent concerns and phone calls pertain to one or two staff members. Year after year parental complaints revolve around a few teachers. If parents call these staff members prior to calling you, the parents’ interactions with these difficult teachers will just make bad situations worse.

Think about preparing for the annual start-of-the-year open house or for an upcoming parent-teacher conference. Do you have staff members who will leave such negative impressions with mothers and fathers that you can anticipate calls from and meetings with parents? Many parents will request (demand) that their children be reassigned. And to be truthful, you cannot even blame the parent for desiring this. You would like to take all students out of their classes. These difficult teachers create a public perception that is very negative and harmful to the school.

Consider the impact of a negative teacher who is in line at the grocery store on a Friday afternoon on the way home from work. In the line next to this teacher is your PTA president— a very nice, friendly, and supportive parent. The parent says to the teacher sincerely, “Have a nice weekend!” The difficult teacher is the one who responds in a sarcastic tone, “Yeah, maybe I can, since I don’t have to deal with those kids for two days!” This contact establishes such a negative tone and feeling for the school. We have to help alter the behavior of the teacher in order to continue to build the credibility and reputation of our school.

Resistance to Change. Have you and several faculty experienced growing enthusiasm for a new program? Just as that enthusiasm balloon was filling with energy, was there a staff member waiting to pull out a pin and pop it?

Nearly everyone resists change; that is natural. This reluctance is a normal reaction to the fear of the unknown. However, some individuals go far beyond this normal apprehensiveness. They fight, attack, and attempt to sabotage improvement attempts. Their efforts regularly thwart any type of change. This is often true even though the change does not affect them. They just see their role as protecting the status quo.

Many times a principal must develop an understanding of their methods of resistance and the informal dynamics they have that affect so many others in the school. This understanding can be an important factor in working with the most difficult faculty.

Dampen Enthusiasm/Damage Climate. Good staff morale and school climate are essential to a productive and successful school. Teachers who constantly drain excitement, enthusiasm, climate, and culture must be contained. These difficult teachers cannot continue to be such a burden on the positive staff members in the school. In order for schools to be as effective as they need to be in working with our students, principals have to alter the behavior and minimize the effect that these negative teachers have on other staff members.

Individuals who consistently complain in the teachers’ workroom or lounge can often have a substantial crippling effect on an entire school. What is the most reliable predictor of whether teachers will be griping in the teachers’ lounge tomorrow? Most likely it is whether they were griping in the teachers’ lounge today. The faculty who make negative comments or continually complain at staff meetings can set the tone for the entire school, if they continue. It is critical that the principal be aware of the result of these inappropriate behaviors and reduce both the behaviors and their potential impact. Often behaviors like these become habits and we have to effectively intervene in order to change this environment in a productive manner.

Parade of Students to the Office. If someone had asked you last July to predict the three teachers in your school who would send the highest number of students to the office in the upcoming school year, could you have done it? Can you predict which teachers will refer the most students to the office for discipline next year? You probably can. Even more amazingly, you do not even have to know beforehand which students are going to be enrolled in their classes! We know that the behavior of the teachers is generally more of a determinant of office referrals than the students’ behavior. That is why we can usually predict how many students will be sent to the office from each classroom. Selfishly, as well as educationally, principals need to get these inappropriate teacher behaviors to change. Otherwise we can never get out of the reactive mode. The truly difficult teachers generally have the “messiest” discipline situations to sort out. This is often true because their methods are difficult to defend and yet the teachers still need to be supported.

Principals often cite time as their biggest need in order to increase their effectiveness as instructional leaders. Many times, especially in schools with no assistant principals, the building leader spends a disproportionate amount of time reacting to problems sent by difficult teachers. I have often thought of it as the 10/90 rule. Ten percent of our teachers generate 90 percent of the discipline referrals in a school. A building leader who could get these difficult teachers to alter their behavior in the classroom, or at least stop parading students to the office, could put much more time and energy into being a proactive leader. Stopping this long line of office referrals from just a few staff members without being viewed as unsupportive of teachers is essential for effective instructional leadership.

The approaches that follow in this book are applicable to each of these types of difficult teachers. Many of the concepts are applicable to a variety of the different, troubling staff members.

2 Three Kinds of Teachers

DOI: 10.4324/9781315819723-3

In order to have a positive effect on altering the inappropriate behaviors of the most difficult staff members, it is imperative to develop an understanding of some of the dynamics that are taking place in your school. It is also crucial to establish some common terminology, which will be used frequently in the upcoming chapters.

A perspective on understanding the different types of teachers is offered by Dr. Al Burr (1993), a former high school principal in the St. Louis area. He believes that there are three kinds of teachers in a school: superstars, backbones, and mediocres.

Burr explains that the way to determine the category of each teacher is fairly simple. Superstars are rare; they constitute the top 3 to 10 percent of teachers in a school. Many schools may have only one or two people who fall into this category. A few outstanding schools may have 8 to 10. They are often the students’ favorite teachers. Parents regularly request that their children be placed in the superstars’ classrooms. A final, but critical, litmus test of superstars is that they are respected by all or almost all other faculty members. This is an important measure. It implies that a superstar cannot be perceived as the “principal’s pet,” because of the respect factor. They can be the favorite teacher of the building administrator, but they cannot be perceived in that fashion or else they may lose the respect of the other staff members. A quick definition: A superstar is a teacher who, if he or she left your faculty, could probably not be replaced with another teacher who is as good or effective as the departing educator. Burr also adds that superstars want two things: autonomy and recognition. This is important to remember as we think about working with our most challenging sta...