The teachers’ adaptation to the school is not an easy process bearing in mind that most of these teachers work in a foreign country where they are required to start working ‘without specific knowledge of the school or its locality’. Some information about the institution and location can be sent in advance or may be obtained online or from other teachers who have worked there, but ‘most learning will inevitably
happen on site’ (Pearce 1998:57):
So, so in the beginning I did have the feeling that I had to sort out, find out things by myself pretty much.
(Carel) You just learn by yourself actually…you do not read a lot, you just ask the others, you just keep you informed.
(Amoux) The period of adjustment varies from teacher to teacher and depends on personal, professional or culture-specific factors. Some of the teachers speak of the difficulties they face from the very beginning:
The problem…to really understand how it works, it’s all new when you arrive there, it takes a long time to really get into the system…we haven’t really any help coming from anywhere…I don’t know (it took me) six months?...to really understand how it really works, but sometimes we’re still learning.
(Amoux) Others speak of the first year like being a party. However, all teachers agree that difficulties or problems are likely to arise sooner or later when you work abroad:
the first year was really an easy going, the second year was more difficult to me…I think the first year is a big party almost, everything is new, you are in a new situation you have to get used to it, it’s nice…and then in the second year everything becomes normal again…so everything you hope you could live in your home country like being bored with your job or I think any other problems you would love to leave in your home country the latest in the second year, all these…arrive…that’s what I found.
(Anna) The teachers undoubtedly need a certain amount of time to adjust and a certain amount of understanding. Some of them face individual or family problems which can be exacerbated when they are combined with a school system of ‘obscurity’ (I: O 060307-01), while the distinctive school culture can have an impact on their
professional confidence:
the whole system at the school, it was different…you know different cultures and the system with those sections, how they are integrated and how they are not integrated and all those things, that was hard.
(Jǿrgen) less now but certainly in the first year, cause I had lots of practical problems, to settle down, I had my family problems to deal with and I had to understand a whole new system, I was never comfortable there that I was doing the right thing.
(Roberto) During this process of adaptation, the school undertakes a responsibility to accommodate teachers in their new role and make them feel comfortable. In the case of Dombey School, however, although initial information comes from the school, this is often ignored and more significant information comes from colleagues from the same cultural background or language section:
yes they’d given us some papers which I barely read I think…mainly asked and I’ve been told…by my colleagues especially from the Italian section.
(Roberto) the German section was just great...and they offered their help which was very helpful cause sometimes you don’t know what to ask, but they offered their help so they were very helpful not only in giving information but welcoming you, inviting you helping you sort out things, asking you how you were.
(Anna) Although the school is trying to help, teachers agree that it is not enough and they feel more comfortable with the help of colleagues or people who have been in the system longer than them and know how things work:
(The induction lasts) maybe one day and a half…I don’t think if you call it a course, no I don’t call it a course.
This is something that isn’t terribly well done I would say but again the information that you get when you come (to Dombey School) is improving but certainly at the time I went to…it wasn’t very good I had to ask…colleagues, and there was no documentation I was handed to allow me to fairly easily adapt to at least a different way of teaching, it’s ok I got by, but it was me who had to take initiative.
(Eadmund) well they’ve all helped, people (who) have been in the system for a long time, not at this school…and there’s another maths teacher...who’s been at this school for a long time, and he’s very good at all the kind of, he knows all the little rules and regulations.
(Lisa) Teachers make an effort to join what the school recommends in an attempt to help new teachers adjust, but most of them agree on the unsuitability of the process. Carel discusses the objectives of group work, which was offered to new teachers as an equivalent to an induction phase:
Ah it was decided on one of those inset days that we should think about how to improve the process for new teachers…Because we had a brochure sent to us with some information, but the information was rather…general…This little work meeting...we had then, we had like two or three meetings…In which we discussed how we can improve the information and what information should be included in the brochure and stuff like that. I joined that group because I felt like that the way the school dealt with new teachers was rather…loveless…Lacking, attention, warmth.
(Carel) Some of the teachers even take the initiative to meet their predecessors, which is something that the school could have suggested or arranged for them:
I met with her once, that was done also not because the school wanted that to happen but because of my own initiative, I thought that was something that could have been, could have been dealt with more…cautiously of the school.
(Carel) Counsellors are available to new teachers, who ‘always come up with many
questions’ (I: C 060403-01), but apart from this there is little evidence that the school offers them explicit help in the process of adjustment to this international context, apart from providing opportunities to socialise and take part in international days, though Hill’s (2000) comment on the value of such events is worth noting here:
Counting the nationalities, the intercultural food fairs, or the celebrations of national days is not of itself sufficient to qualify for providing an international education; these are laudable but superficial indicators.
(p. 36) These teachers feel the need for welcoming support from an environment that should be more ‘giving’ and guiding especially in view of their own commitment to education:
and the most annoying things are things which are related to management really…they are not really supportive, not really interested in what’s going on in the school…I tried at the beginning to get involved but then I thought it’s a waste of energy…it won’t change, she won’t listen.
(Anna) This school’s culture is very distinctive in the sense that it does not encourage collaboration or peer observation so that teachers can develop by sharing ideas or practices. Professional isolation and increased responsibilities, as well as the overwhelming presence of parents add to the heavy teaching load and promote a tendency towards balkanization:
that the multicultural is not often multicultural but it’s different cultures cohabiting side by side but without really mixing…the mixing of different nationalities as far as teachers are concerned…but within teachers there is not much of a mix…so somehow…actually quite the opposite happens, every nationality kind of strengths and highlights its own identity…for as a defence mechanism.
I thought the school was ‘a melting pot of cultures’ when I first came here. I was quickly disappointed in the sense that people stick to their own way, their own culture; they are frightened to try a new approach.
(F: 060316-01) A teacher even speaks of the ‘immigrant syndrome’ teachers are likely to develop within a school when they are isolated from other cultures:
and actually seeing the difference sometimes you tend to think that your things are better, your friends your cooking your whatever it’s better than the others and rather than taking in the other people’s habits you kind of go back to your own…and that’s a kind of immigrant syndrome I guess.
(Roberto)
5.4 Conclusion
In this chapter issues of Dombey School ethos and intercultural communication have been highlighted, teachers’ characteristics, roles, beliefs, motivation to work in the school and qualifications have been explored and their needs and expectations from the school have been identified.
Dombey School teachers’ role as educators is a well-established one due to their genuine love for the children and their subject. Teachers are very conscious of their deliberate choice to work in this school, they enjoy freedom in most areas and appreciate that they are well paid.
However, the existence of more than seven cultures and three privileged languages in the school does not prevent the English ‘host’ language and culture from being the dominant one and this has an impact on foreign teachers’ personal and professional relations in the school, as well as on teachers’ perceptions of each separate culture.
among major cultures in the school, cause an unconscious categorisation, and the impact of this is that individual cultures and teachers tend to keep their distance from one another. This has a consequent impact on teachers’ professional development:
to study I am always open…but that’s not professional development…I mean if someone would offer to me to chair a board of some kind of enterprise that would be a development I guess, but would be also switching to another field…I don’t see the career as an issue here.
(Roberto) Dombey School teachers are members of a school which is multilingual and culturally diverse. And although it is not extremely diverse, teachers from several nationalities transfer their beliefs and views from their national systems and make huge efforts to adapt in an environment which has a distinctive cultural and organisational structure. The means by which and the extent to which those beliefs are transferred into the new working environment depend on those teachers’ previous experiences and perceptions and present job status and have an impact on their degree of satisfaction within a school which does not cater for their individual or professional needs as well as it does for the students.
For the students, the deliberate mixing of pupils from different national and linguistic backgrounds for various subjects, events or activities, studying for a common goal, following the same syllabi, enhances the formulation of cross- linguistic friendships and minimises the ‘nationalistic antagonism and ethno- linguistic tensions across the various language sections’ (Housen 2002b:8), as well as fosters a ‘community spirit’ (Savvides 2006a:119). Teachers unfortunately find themselves in a less enviable position.