Zoe Girl
9-27-16, 10:01am
So I have 2 out of 3 new staff members and yesterday 2 of them talked to me about how it is going. I am stressed thinking about how to make this team work together better, and also thinking that I have done this before and it tends to work out. Okay, over summer we had a great team in many ways and one real negative outlier, but we didn't have many conflicts and we all knew it was short term.
My returning staff has been doing this for 10 years and has never taken a lead role because her coworkers have always had a higher education level. So this year I pushed for her to take more of a lead, and I can see that she is but needs work. She tends to tell the new person what to do without enough information. She is not really understanding that the new guy needs to learn everything.
Brand new guy (to job and this kind of work) needs to learn a lot, and he tends to come to me instead of his coworkers when he has ideas. So that is affecting their communication as well. He worked at another site for 3 weeks where the kids were 'better', not so many special needs, and there was a supervisor who was in the room the whole time.
The other new staff is pretty neutral, she has done this work before and we know when I hire one more person she will shift roles out of this group. She tends to stick with my returning staff person.
So the plan is weekly meetings and a LOT of training. Also doing some team builders with the staff, they aren't really talking to the new guy much. My frustration is that my 2 new staff were loaned out to other sites for 3 weeks since our school opened late. I understand trying to run a program at the beginning of the year does not leave a lot of time for training people, but I have trained staff for other sites before myself and I had asked one supervisor to teach my new guy a couple specific things that didn't happen. I realize I need to spend a LOT more time on this, and I was hoping to do some other things but that is how it is. I try to stay out of the program since the kids come to me for everything when I am in the room. I just really hope we can get to the point where people get along and reasonably like each other.
I forgot to add, there is a part of me that says now that the conflict has been named we can start working on it and that is exciting. Better than not talking about it.
My returning staff has been doing this for 10 years and has never taken a lead role because her coworkers have always had a higher education level. So this year I pushed for her to take more of a lead, and I can see that she is but needs work. She tends to tell the new person what to do without enough information. She is not really understanding that the new guy needs to learn everything.
Brand new guy (to job and this kind of work) needs to learn a lot, and he tends to come to me instead of his coworkers when he has ideas. So that is affecting their communication as well. He worked at another site for 3 weeks where the kids were 'better', not so many special needs, and there was a supervisor who was in the room the whole time.
The other new staff is pretty neutral, she has done this work before and we know when I hire one more person she will shift roles out of this group. She tends to stick with my returning staff person.
So the plan is weekly meetings and a LOT of training. Also doing some team builders with the staff, they aren't really talking to the new guy much. My frustration is that my 2 new staff were loaned out to other sites for 3 weeks since our school opened late. I understand trying to run a program at the beginning of the year does not leave a lot of time for training people, but I have trained staff for other sites before myself and I had asked one supervisor to teach my new guy a couple specific things that didn't happen. I realize I need to spend a LOT more time on this, and I was hoping to do some other things but that is how it is. I try to stay out of the program since the kids come to me for everything when I am in the room. I just really hope we can get to the point where people get along and reasonably like each other.
I forgot to add, there is a part of me that says now that the conflict has been named we can start working on it and that is exciting. Better than not talking about it.