For a bit of context, I’m a first year teacher at a school in my second language where all of the other teachers speak this language as their first language, but not all of the students. I also have the biggest class in the school with the most amount of needs and I don’t have as much assistance as I need in class.

Yesterday after class I went to talk to another teacher to ask her if we could talk about the fact that our students fight in the line outside after recess. Her students are 2 years older so I kind of said that I wanted her to talk to her students about how they should be role models. She turned it around on me and said that it’s ridiculous how my students don’t know how to stand in a straight line in January and that I need to control them. I then started crying because I agree but I don’t know what to do at this point because I talk to them every day about it.

She then became nice and asked why I was upset and I tried to tell her that I just don’t know what I’m doing because there’s so much going on and so much I have to think about and my kids just don’t respect me. I say tried because when I get upset and flustered in my second language it’s hard for me to find words.

She then went on and on about all the things that she does and basically told me I have to do that. I do half of the things already, she only has 16 kids who are mostly all at grade level, and she’s not a young woman, so the dynamic is different. She also told me that she’s “seen that I’ve been struggling” and that I need to be asking for more help and not hiding myself away in my class. I agree that I do need to ask more, but I’m a new teacher at this school and everyone’s all buddy buddy with each other. I’m already intimidated by them and I’m not as comfortable in my second language and they’re not the most approachable people. Also - if she saw that I’ve been struggling why didn’t she help me???

Anyways, I just needed to rant basically because that was a really bad start to my weekend and now I’m probably going to be moping around today and tomorrow.