Perry Kalynuk fires a teacher a week before Xmas break. Should he give, without asking permission, the fired teacher’s email address to her replacement so that the replacement can email the fired teacher for help?

Jon Davis
Teacher married to a teacher
Answered 3 years ago · Author has 3.4K answers and 70M answer views
No. That’s a d*** move.

You fired someone. I’m sure that there were reasons to do that, but if you make that choice, you suffer the consequences, which means that you can’t ask them for help.

Daniel Kaplan
, Veteran high school teacher
Answered 3 years ago · Author has 8.6K answers and 61.6M answer views
I’ve taken over two teaching assignments over the course of my career. In one case, the teacher quit because the students royally abused her (they unsuccessfully tried to do the same to me, and I had to destroy their souls). In the second case, the teacher had quit in order to become an administrator.

In neither case did I get contact information for the teachers who had left their jobs. Why? I didn’t need them. The administrators who had hired me, either intentionally or through dumb luck, had chosen a replacement teacher who could take over a difficult situation. You may have made a mistake in your hiring decision if you thought that you were just looking for a teacher who was filling a slot. Instead, you needed a teacher who could adapt and overcome.

You may very well have a teacher who can do just that. I would suggest meeting with that replacement teacher and getting the lay of the land. If the teacher is having a rough time, I see three options:

Sacrifice the education of these students to the educational industrial complex.
Fire the new teacher look for an appropriate replacement. Write that teacher a nice letter of recommendation and actively help him or her find new employment. His or her inability to deal with a strange situation isn’t his or her fault.
Assist that new teacher. Meet with him or her. Offer advice. Help with the transition.
At no point would I ever consider having some new teacher talk to a teacher you fired (likely not on amicable terms). If you had enough of a problem with that teacher that you fired him or her, you acknowledged that he or she wasn’t necessary to the program. You can’t trust them to help.