A relief teacher was allegedly fired from her job for not handling a student fight that happened during her class.
The teacher took to Instagram, tagging the Ministry of Education, to share what happened, wondering if she was treated professionally.
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She noted that she side hustles teaching math and science at a Secondary school for about a year. “Things were fine, and I enjoyed teaching there,” she said, before highlighting the recent incident.
She wrote, “A minor fight broke out in a section 1 class, and I happened to be taking that class at that time. To be honest, I was shocked, but thereafter I followed up (by reprimanding them, telling them to stop the fight, getting the class-chair to report the incident to their form teacher, and going over to check and question the two students who were involved in the fight). The whole incident lasted less than five minutes, and the class was back to normal after.”
However, she received a call the following day from the discipline mistress she referred to as “Ms A.”
Ms A inquired about the incident before telling the relief teacher that she wasn’t doing anything during the fight, based on the CCTV footage, as she was seated when the fight happened.
“Of course, CCTV couldn’t capture sound,” said the teacher.
Ms A continued to say that she wasn’t being “proactive” and was “unprofessional” in handling the situation.
The school management then decided to terminate her contract.
“She (Ms A) claimed that she had a discussion with the principal prior to this (the phone call),” said the teacher.
However, she later discovered that the incident wasn’t discussed in-depth, and the head of the department who hired her wasn’t fully aware of the situation at that time.
“It is also hard for them to explain to the parents,” said the teacher, quoting Ms A.
The teacher then wondered if the school handled the situation professionally.
“First of all, I did sincerely apologise on my end for not handling the situation in the best possible way. However, is the school handling this situation in a fair and just matter right now? By dismissing their non-full-time staff through a phone call, and also not hearing them out properly face to face.”
She noted not being given a chance to meet the person in charge to explain.
“It has been a week, and my simple request wasn’t granted. Yet it takes less than a day when it comes to following up and placating the parents.”
Regarding the incident, she pointed out that relief teachers weren’t given standard operating procedures to handle such scenarios.
“From a third party’s point of view, the school is basically trying to find the easy way out,” she added.
“Did I cause that fight? No. Did I want the fight to happen? No. Such incident is beyond our control, and therefore it is unfair to push the blame to one party,” said the teacher.
Netizens urged her to report what happened to MOE directly, as her dismissal was unjustified.
“Yea, sounds like scapegoating. You’re the easiest piece to remove, so they would try to tag it to you,” added Instagram user @cheahkuan./TISG