Leadership

While working as a Physical Education and English teacher in the United Arab Emirates, I participated in a program to ensure schools were striking a good balance between subjects, during which I supervised teachers and provide them with feedback to help improve.

On one occasion, a teacher I had been observing disagreed with my feedback and complained to their headteacher, who then summoned me to explain myself. Conscious that I would need to defend the program I asked an Arabic member of the program along too, to help manage any issues with translation.

During the meeting, the headteacher was confrontational, but I stayed calm and outlined the aims of the program, referring back to the syllabus to explain how the minimum criteria needed to be met in order for the assessments to be passed. I also discussed the procedure for challenging these assessments, making it clear there was an opportunity for the observation to be repeated in several months.

My calm but assertive attitude reduced the tense situation and the headteacher agreed to a reassessment at a later date. While the situation was resolved, I reported this incident back to the Team Leader for the program, as I suspected the lack of understanding of the program represented a broader breakdown of communication between school Boards (who had signed up to the program) and their headteachers.

As a result, this was discussed with Boards and led to a refresh of the program to ensure its objectives were clearer for participating schools.

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