Christine Courtney

A fraught job If you come into the job as a newbie or part way through the year you're often given school placements at terrible schools/ extremely difficult placements that no-one else wanted to undertake. I was pushed into a difficult placement outside my area of my expertise. I was often left alone with over 35 kindergarteners- too many students to manage alone for physical activity. Not only is this illegal, but they place any blame or burden on the leadership trainers. Supervisors act like it's no big deal, as long as they can keep the school program in the schools. Obviously as a leadership trainer when you're placed in situations like that the program is destined to encounter problems. So, instead of taking on less schools with more support for trainers they frequently fire leadership trainers. There are some nice supervisors there in the team, however the majority will wring you out to dry, try to get you to do as much work (outside of paid time) as possible for student projects, and if the school didn't think the program was a success, it's entirely your fault and they fire employees. Leadership trainers are the chosen scapegoats for a fraught educational program which needs considerable revision.