A colleague is experiencing her first pregnancy. Granted, we can understand if she's anxious or if she's worried that she can't handle a lot of stress. But to use her pregnancy as an excuse to (1) not schedule remedials on Friday afternoon for her subject so that she can have an early start of her weekend rest for 'mother and baby', (2) cut the queue for food/toilet/printer/photocopying machine, (3) request to have her classes split into two AND to take the better half because she's afraid she might get depressed if she has to keep repeating the same thing over and over again to a weaker class... gosh, it's really too much. To make it worse, if she submits work late or if she's late for a meeting, she never fails to mention "must understand, i'm pregnant." Or, after finalising distribution of duties for the term, she ends in by saying "I'm pregnant, not sure if I can continue to contribute further."
Seriously!!!! She's not the first one in the staffroom to get pregnant! If she's so worried, take no pay leave since her hubby brings in lots of income anyway.
I guess as gentlemen, we have to live and let live. Afterall, its very un-manly for guys to be complaining or being unkind about/to pregnant ladies. Unless this gets out of hand, I think its pretty alrite to give in a bit of here or there since its the graceful/right thing.
ReplyDeleteIf it gets out of hand, what she has done is to create a bad reputation and no doubt that will have certain repercussions. Afterall pregancy is only 9 months and is much shorter than her teaching career.
I would suggest the more senior teachers, esp that has gone thru pregancy, should speak out and remind her her place if this gets out of hand. Otherwise, if nobody voice out means nobody has any problem with this and therefore does not require any solutions.
Hmmm... maybe the next trick she will pull off is being rude or simply telling colleagues off because of her 'hormones imbalance' claims.