A voluntary team of teacher + admin from each school (admin were invited, the schools who chose to join were part of the team, and they asked teachers) along with the director of secondary ed attended a sessions with the instructor, then did discussion groups on the topics. We did some readings, some targeted observations of classes (with the teacher's permission--some teachers didn't want us in their rooms), Q&A with students, and further discussions to look into how students approach learning (not how teachers approach it). We did document our observations and discussions, and materials were made available to all staff. We used our learning to bring it back to the staffs of our respective buildings and continue the conversations on that level. We also reported to the board and presented our work to them.

So a documented discussion as part of a focus group is fishy? We have teacher representation at district discussions around scheduling--admin, selected teachers, classified staff, etc.--where a few teachers represent the interest groups. This was no different. Again, our work was documented, shared with staffs, shared with the board, and very public. There was no benefit to being part of the group other than the learning that came out of it.

I don't know what's fishy about a work group like that.

There aren't really any. They are signed up with both.

And yes, even superstar ITs have to apply to elite schools. They can do that through any agency or without an agency. They may not need the fair, but they need to apply. So how does ISS give an edge? Do they contact schools on your behalf and do the applying for you, then fly you to the schools to interview?

This plus sometimes they realize after hiring that a visa is not possible and they and the IT have to make changes.

I agree with PsyGuy, choose situation over money. Not just location, but workload, working conditions, etc. You have to enjoy where you live, not just be content, and you have to enjoy going to work every day or it won't matter where you live. If you are worried about money, ask yourself why that is so important--do you have massive debt or are you simply looking to have some extra spending cash? What are your spending habits, and if that is important to you, then why IE? If you went into IE for the coin, choose Saudi Arabia, but my guess is that's not why you chose IE. Most of us choose it for the experiences and the people--the way TCKs are different from host country students, the way the educational philosophy differs, and of course for personal growth--seeing the world, meeting cool people, doing new things. My guess is Nigeria will give you more of that, but of course only you can answer that. Remember that many schools in SA are mostly host nation students. If that is a factor, make sure you take it into account. If you want the extra money to travel and you leave SA every weekend, then why be there?

Hopefully those questions help you clarify what YOU want out of the experience. I am not in it for the money, so I will always choose location over coin and work environment over coin.

I won't deny that as far as it concerns me.

PsyGuy would have you believe it is common. Turns out it really isn't. It happens, usually because of things like visas, but it's not a regular thing. I would say it seems more common for teachers to do a runner, but that's just a perception based on people like higgs and Psy commenting on here. Psy is promoting doing a runner when there is no reason to and making it seem like HOSs have nothing better to do than write phony rec letters so they can undermine you for moving on in a professional manner. Sorry, but turnover is part of the job, and admin expects it. They aren't going to blast you for leaving as smoothly as possible and trying to do right by them. Ignore you, maybe, but not actively seek to destroy. They have other priorities.

Most assuredly not! Glad you are entertained. I would love to hear your take since I quoted you.

Ah, the what if game. What if your evidence is based on observations, but those observations are wrong because your eyes are tricking you? You are assuming your eyes are working, after all. You say you trust data, but when you are presented with data you don't like, you don't trust it because after all, what if?

As for the IS, they know they need an X teacher IF the teacher departing acts in good faith. The IS only knows what the IT has told them, and has told them that the position. What if things change? Well, then that contract is just as meaningless as the lack of one. What if the teacher stays? Well, then the school acted in good faith to the best of its abilities, though you are determined to call it deception. What if, what if, what if?

Wait, why am I restricted to asking the observer in the room of the rose? If I want to know about the rose, why not ask the guy holding it? Why not ask the guy standing beside him?

Ah, that explains it. Well, if you ACTUALLY gamb1ed, you would know that when you lose, the fact that you have been deceived becomes obvious.

Informing people is often all the persuasion they need, but even if it isn't, persuasion does not inherently require deception.

You are the one not recognizing the assumption--that there is a lie at all. You assume there is and then call me naive for not seeing it when the reality is that you are simply assuming its existence.



Again, we took a calculated risk--one we weighed carefully using a mountain of evidence. We considered how binding a contract would be and how likely one was to be forthcoming. We decided that we would be okay walking out of the fair with a handshake promise of a pending contract. That contract has since arrived.

Funny, I gave you my numbers--I do work with more than the average teacher--and you heard that I made it up. Because I didn't qualify my initial statement as being more than average for my district, you heard that I must somehow be comparing to all DT or IE or whatever it is you wanted me to provide that I didn't. That said, I can also say that given the number of rural districts in the US and their low turnover and given that our district is a fairly representative sample with, if anything, higher admin movement, it's a reasonable extrapolation that my numbers are representative of DT as a whole. Not that it matters. My point is that I have and do work with a lot of administrators, and I have done so successfully in all but the one instance. But of course I must be fabricating it because you cannot independently verify it.

No, I cannot verify to you that only the one admin is an adversary. For all you know I am not even a teacher but some prison inmate behind a keyboard making all this up. Because I didn't provide palm readings on all admin, I must be making things up. My professional reputation, my references, my working relationships--all meaningless because I can't produce them to a stranger on a blackboard?

We were not behind closed doors plotting, we were on a transparent PD team that presented regularly on our work. It just wasn't practicable to have all teachers and admin attend--one of each from each school got to do this, and I was chosen by my admin to represent my staff. When I moved schools, a different teacher took my place. But because I didn't provide details to a stranger on a blackboard, we must have been doing something fishy, right?

No, budgeting isn't hard, but when you start doing it, you are doing administrative tasks. Finding a warm body to sign a contract isn't hard, but if you are the one responsible for it, you are doing administrative tasks. Taking bids on construction, hiring custodial staff, etc. are administrative tasks. If you are coordinating accreditation, you are performing administrative tasks. So by your reckoning either these need not happen or doing these somehow doesn't make a person an administrator. After all, being an admin doesn't mean you do admin tasks, it means you grow little red horns and a tail. Admin are evil, not just people who do the administrative tasks as part of the process. And just because you don't understand what Common Core is doesn't mean leadership doesn't. Just because at your school the staff wasn't involved in writing the mission statement doesn't mean the same isn't true at other schools. Admissions is admin in many schools, leadership creates the master schedule in most, and junior leadership is still admin! Admin approves all purchase orders and the contractors. The point isn't which tasks do or don't get done. It's that doing these tasks does NOT make one an adversary, and they ARE necessary for teachers to do their jobs.

I have no idea where you got anything about lawsuits having only to do with accreditation; lawsuits can stem from any number of things, and all of them trace back to administration.

The IE pool IS still small on a global school, and it is even smaller when you are talking about higher profile schools. You can't play dirty, especially at such a school, and not expect word to get out. It really does.

I have no idea why union membership, especially in a state in which union dues are compulsory, is relevant to anything. If anything, it underscores my point that if our mostly union member district can have such a positive relationship with its admin, both on a building level and on a district level, there is no reason to be so absolutely bitter about the role of administration.

Of course, no matter what I say I know you can just come back with all the "what ifs." I don't allow students to play the "what if" game, drawing up less and less likely scenarios forever. You seem quite fond of the game. What if the school does this horrible thing or what if that unlikely scenario is true. What if you are actually that inmate and are making it all up? We could go on. but the point is the same.


If you don't need to burn the bridge, don't. If someone burns a bridge, let it be the other guy. That way at least you did your best, both as a human and a professional, to keep it standing, and if you want it later, it might still be there. Don't get sucked into the what if paranoia and let it trick you to burning a bridge you don't have to.

Yes, claims contain underlying assumptions, but it does not follow that they are based/formed on those assumptions or that the evidence is all based on the same assumption. Otherwise we could never study or debate anything!

No, nobody knows what the IS intends to do except the IS--but we can know what they claim, and we can know that they did follow through.

And if I ask someone outside the room, they can tell me whether or not there is a rose as well as what color that rose is if it exists. All I have to do is ask the people outside the room. Not hard IF you have the right connections. We were lucky--we did.

I changed the game to five card draw because the generic term is apparently not allowed on here. Who knew that one can have a world series of this Vegas game on TV but not mention the card game on this board?

Did you know you can make a sales pitch honestly? Really! The HOS may be making a sale--but not to us. We are the commodity, remember? And why do you assume that he must by deceptive? While I also read C.S. Lewis, I do not assume that two truths must contain a lie between them.

In this case, we WERE right--we have already received the contract, which was the issue being discussed.

I do find it amusing that the more I answer you, the more your language changes.

I do not have a source on DT as a whole, but in our district the average teacher stays at the same building for 9 years while the average administrator is in place for 3 for principals and 5-6 for VPs (our district has a policy of rotating principals). So in our district, the average teacher gets 5-6 admin over 9 years, maybe 7-8 for high schools with multiple VPs. I have worked closely with 15 at least in that time frame. Does that help? I really am not making up the fact that I have worked closely with more than the average number of administrators. Only the one has been problematic, and she has been problematic for other admin as well as other teachers who had spotless reputations. The other admin in the building that year backed me up. So yes, I would say it was just the one. That doesn't mean they all worship me or anything--just that they all work with me professionally and treat me with respect. I do the same for them.

As for the PD, it was a project (not illegal!) in which an admin and a teacher pair from several of our district buildings met and worked through a multi-year PD together. I don't see how working in partnership with admin as the teacher representative for a school even resembles an illegal relationship, but it doesn't matter as it was perfectly legal here. Yes, I am aware that there is no equivalent to our superintendent position in IE, but it's not relevant, is it? My point was that I know how to work collaboratively with different levels of admin and have done so successfully throughout my career.

Sure, schools can function without admin for a day. They wouldn't last long, though. Admin deal with budgeting, facilities, hiring, curriculum, accreditation, and vision. Yes, I could come in and teach my lessons, but only because admin provided the physical space, enrolled and scheduled students, purchased materials, etc. I could teach without accreditation or insurance--until a family brought a lawsuit or, depending on the country, legal charges. I could teach kids, but after awhile, our electricity would be shut off, our garbage cans would be overflowing, and the kids would get very hungry at lunchtime because nobody hired and coordinated a classified staff.

My absence from IE was short, so yes, I am returning, not that it is relevant.

I realize teachers in IE have less recourse than in DSs. However, I am not advocating burning a bridge while on it or even hanging out on a bridge while it burns. I am saying the IS community is small and we need all the intact bridges we can find; burning them unnecessarily benefits nobody except that person looking for some vindictive satisfaction.

I don't shy away from talking about it if asked or if it were to come up naturally. I don't volunteer it or put it on my paperwork. I am not ashamed of it, but it is something that should be mentioned in person. It is generally not relevant one way or another to my application as most ISs don't have a union.

No, if you pull a runner, you shouldn't be surprised at leadership's attitude toward you.

The IS HAS followed through as far as can be done short of time travel! They did letter for letter what they said they would, and we now have the contract. And we won't reach the final destination of our journey with them until we are ready to move on to the next assignment or even after that. I wouldn't want to be at the final destination now--we're at the start, and I fully intend on enjoying the journey of my dream job. Isn't that the point, after all?

Why do you say that our data relies on assumption and lacks system integrity? What precisely are we assuming? What system checks would you have us put in place to ensure that the data is accurate? Or were you just trying to play word games? The reality is that, no, you can't always plan for everything, know everything, eliminate every bias, etc. But you CAN learn a great deal about the school and the people by gathering information from multiple and independent sources. Your - is flawed because you assume all people providing the information are inside the room rather than asking the person actually holding up the blue filter or even just someone outside the room.

You say this is a gossip forum, and that word of mouth is essentially gossip. Fine, I got my information through gossip. It does not necessarily follow that it is faulty simply because you label it as gossip. So if they say it to me personally via text message or FB or in person, it's somehow different from the type of thing said on this particular forum? Sure--it might be more honest because it's delivered personally and not posted publicly. But it is still information from people who have had experiences with the school or the HOS--nothing more or less than the stuff posted on the paid portion (and sometimes public portion) of this site.

You don't play Five Card Draw, do you? You'd know if you were only catching 50% of the liars.

No, the HOS isn't inexperienced--just very, very direct. He didn't hesitate to tell us the good and the bad about his school--what faculty found frustrating about the management, etc.--although it wasn't anything we hadn't already deduced from the website, the news article, and most importantly, from the grapevine (gossip if you prefer). Everthing everyone has said about him, for better or worse, has included some mention of his frank nature. People sometimes hated it and sometimes praised it, but they nearly always mentioned it. Some people just are that frank, whatever you may believe, and it is often an asset in recruiting if you are at a school that turns away a lot of applicants.

Why is it so important to you to have me fail? Why do you want me to be wrong? I have already conceded that you are right--most of the time going without a contract is not a good idea and that there was a chance, however small, that we might not get a contract. Is it so terrible for you to admit that sometimes, when done right, it CAN work, and that we might be those people who did it right?

Ah, here we go. Making it personal.

I have worked with numerous admin at a number of campuses--three of them rotating into my campus, and my current position is at multiple campuses, one of which also has new admin this year. So I work with more administrators than the average teacher simply because of my multi-campus position. I have also served in a specialized admin/teacher pair PD team. I did that WHILEs serving as a union rep because in our district, the union and the admin actually don't have an adversarial relationship most of the time. I have met with two different superintendents to arrange various programs, etc. It is only this one administrator, who has a history of aggressively going after teachers who do not meet specific criteria unrelated to teaching, professionalism, etc. Again, other admin in the building backed me up, and this admin is currently dealing with a lawsuit. I will again let the data speak for itself. My record is fantastic with many administrators--all but the one, who has a bad track record with a number of otherwise highly regarded teachers. Which one of us do you really think was the aggressor, especially given my comments about not treating admin like adversaries?

I am also not new to IT, just returning to it. While abroad, I worked wonderfully with admin. I do not put my union work on my CV because I recognize that while it is a privilege in my current district to serve my colleagues in this way, in many places this is not true and can be seen as adversarial. In our district, we use it as a way to facilitate the relationship between admin and teachers rather than as a wedge. Most places are not this lucky. I don't shy from the role, but I don't advertise it.

Those expecting to be targets often become targets by behaving as such. They pull runners out of fear, then act surprised when the bridge is burned and feel justified because the school doesn't speak highly of them. Bait, really? If they don't have anything nice to say, most admin aren't going to take the time to write a phony nice letter just to attack later. Besides, you already have a job or you wouldn't have come to them. The letter would be for at least two years out most likely. They certainly won't write a phony letter just to burn you in two years.

Yes, token representation IS better because boards sometimes make decisions without understanding why a teacher might say it's a bad idea. They might proceed with the best of intentions, but when a teacher points out a consideration they hadn't though of, they realize that their intentions and their actions didn't match up.

We could not teach if there were no administrators. To say they do not contribute to the process is to fundamentally and willfully misunderstand their (and thus our own) role in it. Sure, some are bad--so are some teachers.

You really are completely cynical. It's sad.

Why are you so sure the data is bad? Since the expected outcome--the school following through and honoring its promise to send the contract--has already happened, I would say that the data seems to have been good. Again, when the data comes from multiple sources, it is more likely to be accurate--so we got multiple sources. You are right that it is a risk--something I have repeatedly acknowledged. The data just meant it was a very calculated one.

Yes, the grapevine is fantastic--hey, former colleague who now runs PD in a number of schools across the region including this one--what can you tell me about the school? Hey, former colleague whose father is HOS in the same region and works closely with HOS in question, what does he know and what do you know? Hey, IT friend who used to work at this school, what is your impression? Hey, we were in the city (for an unrelated reason), arranged a tour of the campus, and got a chance to shoot the breeze with you current teachers--what would you say? Hey, former colleague who is part of an organization on which HOS sits on the board, what can you tell us? If that is gossip to you, fine--but then let's be consistent and call sites like this one gossip sites. Or, if they are distinct, tell me the difference and I will tell you if I used grapevine, gossip, or some combination thereof.

The point is that you CAN get a lot of independent data this way, and when numerous sources give the same information or insight, that's independent verification.

No, having data verified doesn't make my husband a good judge of character, but his success with this skill over the years indicates he is. But that's not something I could easily verify on a forum like this, now, is it? Suffice it to say that I know him and his abilities far better than you do, so we're going with my assessment on this one. Though in this instance, his skill was not really necessary as this HOS is as pretty easy read, highly transparent, and exactly what we had deduced from our many sources. Sure, he could be a skilled sociopath, fooling us and everyone around him--but if his behavior follows what he says and we get the contract, then what do I care if in his heart he is simultaneously plotting to sink our futures?

And while it's easy to conceal some things, the internet is a big place. There is little regulation to provide oversight of wronged teachers.

Again, if contracts are unenforceable, why is it even a risk to walk out without one as opposed to with one? There isn't really a difference, is there? We are all just relying on the good graces of a school to keep us employed.

I am trying to figure out why you insist it was such a poor decision when even having a contract is essentially meaningless, why you insist we couldn't possibly know enough to make an informed decision simply because, well, you just think so, and why you want so badly to discredit me. That is why I persist.

Your interpretation: Well, other people directly disparaged Iowa in the winter while Thames only said it was less exciting than London or Bangkok. But rather than acknowledge that I just said the same thing, I am going to stick up for the fictional person who was not at all offended by the opinion offered by at least five others, myself included.

My interpretation: I agreed with PsyGuy, but because he wants to undermine me here rather than answer the question I posed on the other thread, he will now attack the very idea that he expressed and that was expressed by at least four other people in a bid to make me seem like an elitist.

Yeah, I would say our interpretation of the data is different, but the data is out there and the people reading this thread can draw their own conclusions.