Monday morning

June 1990

I was excited. One of the fringe benefits of my work as a middle manager in Adult Education was the opportunity to attend residential conferences paid for by work - a fun and free holiday. This was my third such occasion, and having greatly enjoyed the others, I could only anticipate that this one would be as good if not better.

The venue was the Further Education Staff College (FESC in education speak) in Blagdon, Somerset, near Bristol. My instructions mentioned that a coach would be meeting members from the conference at the train station at Bristol and transporting them the twenty miles of so to the college. The subject this time was Personal Development.
 
Part of the conference preparation was to make a list of what one wanted to get out of it - to present to the Principal as justification for the cost of the course - and of course, I knew I would have to write a detailed report at the end as well. So best to start with first principles.

I loved my job  which involves organising classes for anyone from 16-95 in the area covered by Macclesfield College’s catchment area - roughly 15 miles in all directions from there. I had progressed from 1980 when I was hired, and was in charge of 20 classes in the remote outpost of Disley, to where I am now in charge of 100 groups in 4 different areas, and also was coordinator of staff development for the tutors I hired. It was not quite a full-time job - a .9 of a full time post - but I spent much more time on it than I was paid to do, as it was great fun.

"Let’s see," I thought, "personal Development to me means helping me to be better at my job, by helping me to relate to both colleagues and students better. I would like help with criticising others."

I remembered what a cockup I made when I wrote a disciplinary letter to one of the teachers who had been accused by a student of sexual discrimination. She was the only woman in his woodwork class, and the student had felt belittled by his attitude towards her. I should have seen him privately and told him about the student’s accusations - and asked for his view on it. Instead I sent him a letter, as I am much more confident in written language than I am in face to face encounters, and he took great umbridge and quit. I did see him afterwards and we talked it through. He felt she had totally misunderstood his attitude - but he also mentioned that he felt she was neurotic and he didn’t like her being in his class - so maybe they both had some right on their side.

And although I managed to get him to stay on for the rest of the term, he did properly resign at the end. We missed out on a very good tutor, as I couldn’t find anyone to replace him. He was also the tutor for that subject at the high school, which meant that he had the support of the head teacher for the use of the school’s tools, and when I approached the head with the request for using the premises with a different tutor, I was told it was not possible. So I slotted in a furniture restoration class in its place - which was very successful, but still, I knew I had handled the situation with the woodworking tutor very badly.

That also brought to mind my relationship with the head teacher of the school. He had been against me from the first. I had made some comment shortly after I had taken up his post about how I would like to start twilight classes - between 4 when the high school classes finished - and 7 when our ordinary classes started. When I was first employed, my salary depended on the number of classes I ran - so the more I could fit in- the better from my point of view.  I said “You probably have students who would benefit from another aspect of education, and perhaps we could be of use to them. And I would assume there would be a late bus for them to travel home on afterwards.”

Ouch. I had hit a very sore point. My children were educated in Stockport - and they had loads of after school activities organised for them, with bus service afterwards. I had just assumed the same would be true for this school, which was under Cheshire, and it not only wasn’t the case, but the Head took great umbrage in my comments. From then on, whatever new strategy I wanted to try that would need his permission, he blocked. He treated me with contempt - and practically snarled when he saw me in the corridors. He refused to let us use his computers for teaching adults at night, and wouldn’t let me and my clerical helper use his photocopying facilities in the school. All in all, I had made an enemy. 

When I had first taken over the venue of his high school, I was the first woman to be in charge - and the first non-teacher from his staff to do so. When I was hiring my clerical assistant, I refused his suggested candidate - one of his daytime secretaries - to someone of my own choice (after applications forms and interviews of course). So many strikes against me.

Thinking back to those job interviews makes me laugh. My children were scandalised. I had a short list of 5 - and interviewed them all on one evening. One candidate was a man - and he was by far the best qualified. I made them all take a small math’s test - to see how they could cope with handling money - because the person involved would have to collect fees, as I did, and would need to be able to calculate quickly and accurately the cost of classes which fell into all sorts of different categories - some were pay as you go - flat rate no matter what your circumstances. Some were reduced rate for reasons of the student qualifying for benefits - (which of course had to be checked) and then the course might run for 5 - 8 -10 -20 or 25 weeks. It might be 1, 1 ½, or 2 hours long. There might be an exam charge extra - or materials charges.  Anyway, I felt I was justified in setting my little test.

Four of the five candidates failed the test - only the man passed. But I didn’t hire him. He was very personable, well qualified, keen to do the job. But I didn’t want to work with him. Why? Well first of all, because I thought that he wouldn’t stay with the job long. He was too qualified to be happy with a 10 hour a week, badly paid job, term time only. But if I really dug deep into my self-conscious, I knew it was because he was a man - and I was nervous about having him work for me.

Of the four other candidates I had to pick from, I again chose my assistant for an odd reason. One was suitable but couldn’t start when I needed her. Another of the women wore a short skirt and very high heels (obviously assuming she was going to be interviewed by a man) - another wore sensible shoes but hadn’t shaved her legs - and the one I hired wore shoes that I might have bought, and had brought a book with her to read while she waited which was written by an author she who was one of my favourites.

You can see from this that I needed help. I needed Personal Development. And the thing that seemed to stand out most in my problems relating to work, was my reluctance to deal with, and inability to cope with men. My current boss was a woman and I had no problems with her, but previously, my male boss and I had not got along well.

So my goal for the week was to find out why I didn’t work well with men and to try to find out what to do about it.