Managers, what would you say?

Question

I am a supervisor at a school and am having a problem with one of my paid student workers. I've generalized the below situation but would like some feedback on how to handle this:

You leave your office at 5:00 PM after instructing your head SA to complete preparations for a class which will start at 7:00 the same night. The same SA is responsible for proctoring the test for the class. The next day you receive numerous complaints from students concerning problems that occurred the night before. The SA failed to give students their ID cards, gave out the wrong schedules, and forgot to tell students when to stop and start working on different sections of the test. The SA’s excuse is that she had worked all day and just lost track of time. You notice that she spends a lot of time chatting with students and is online frequently.

1. What would you say to the SA about what happened during the class?
2. What suggestions would you offer to address the problem?

For those of you interested in more details, I am NOT a professor or instructor, I am a supervisor in a center of the school which issues tests (SAT, ACT, MCAT, GRE, etc.) and I've just accepted this position recently. This particular student worker has never had any previous issues that I am aware of and the duties outlined above are pretty typical of our student workers (they are paid employees after all, they CAN proctor tests). I hope that helps clear up any confusion and/or aggression the question may have caused (Forge).

Answer 1

Wow Forge. I think you would make an excellent Teacher/Profesor - you seem self righteous enough. You are making too many assumptions and do not have the necessary information to make such self opinionated comments. Get over yourself.

Edit to above poster
You are handing out judgement based on your own opinion, you do not have the proper background information to make such comments. No where does it state if this employee has been outstanding up until now....yet somehow you have all the answers..psychic maybe? You assume too much and it's absolutely appalling. I can see why you "were" a district manager. Use your head - you couldn't even answer two simple outlined questions without going into a self opinionated rant...tsk tsk.

Answer 2

Your performance during class the other night was unacceptable. You did x, y, and z that are bad because of w. I have noticed a change in your performance outside of class also - spending a lot of time chatting and online. These are some issues I'll expect you to work on. Do we need to revisit the expectations of this job and discuss what we can do to meet those expectations? (Generally this is where she will give excuses, but it doesn't matter why what happened happened, just that we fix it in the future.) We will have another conversation about this in about a month.

Answer 3

(sighs...) Seriously, you should've been there doing your job, not passing the buck to someone else. Someone else who is obviously not competent enough to follow through with the responsibilities allocated.

You're a supervisor at a school and you can't see that this person shouldn't be an SA in the first place? You mentioned that she talks to other students and goofs off online. Never mind what the SA did, look at your own actions! You gave responsibility to someone who shows a lack of responsibility. What were YOU thinking?!? You are NOT living up to YOUR job of being a supervisor. Blame yourself, not the SA. You have poor managerial skills...

One more thing; I've never had any of my teachers or professors not be in class for an exam.

EDIT: In response to the comment below... I spent most of adult life being a District Manager for a major supermarket chain. This supervisor gave responsibility to someone who lacks the initiative to be responsible when not in the presence of a "boss". The asker of this question clearly notes that she has witnessed the SA being chatty and spending time online. It's the asker's own fault for handing out tasks to someone she fully admits is a slacker. How is that living up to your own managerial responsibilities? Use your brain...

Answer 4

that there were numerous complaints about the class and the way they conducted the class and themselves. Review the complaints and get their side , whatever they say, tell them their preformance was not acceptable and cannot continue,remind them that with a job comes responsibility and reliability and if they are not ready to commit to an acceptable level of performance and responsibility ,that the job will no longer be theirs. Sounds harsh but thats the real world...so they better get used to it.

Answer 5

If this is an isolated incident, and you have not had similar problems with her in the past, explain the importance of her role in the education of your students, and ask that she put herself into their places and ask herself if that is how she would like to be treated. I don't know if you can fire her, but the next offense should be dealt with severely.

Of couse, I never liked it when other students proctored my exams. I felt that the teacher should be there suffering along with me.