Mansplaining coworker kept interrupting teacher's class until her comeback had students cheering

A teacher reported her male colleague repeatedly interrupting her class to explain her lessons. She shared her story on Reddit on November 10, but later deleted it. Her post revealed how she had been working at a high school in Chicago for six years. Having done her Master's in Education, she knew her subject inside out. Everything was perfect until a new teacher joined the school. He was in his mid-50s and had come from the private sector, so this was his first teaching job. "He's in the classroom next to mine, teaching the same subject," she wrote, adding that the new hire began interrupting her from the very beginning, starting with casual, subtle remarks.

"He would see my lesson plans in the shared drive and message me 'suggestions' that were just my lesson plan reworded," she said. However, things escalated when he barged into her Construction class and gave a 5-minute explanation of literally what she had been teaching. "My students were staring at him like he'd grown a second head. I was frozen in shock," the teacher recalled. After class, she confronted him and told him it was inappropriate to interrupt her class. "He said he was 'trying to help' because he 'noticed I was struggling to explain it clearly,'" she said. The teacher was well-educated and knew all about her subject, and obviously didn't need anyone to teach her better. 

The next time the male colleague did this, she had reached her threshold and decided to report him to the higher-ups. She stopped him in front of the whole class and ordered him to leave. The male teacher was embarrassed, but he started to argue. "I repeated, 'Leave my classroom,'" she wrote, and the minute he left, students started clapping. The female teacher filed a complaint with the department head, who told her that it wasn't the first time somebody had reported him. In fact, he had done something similar with another female History teacher. "He is being moved to a different hall and has been told that if he enters another teacher's classroom again without permission, then it's a write-up," she shared. After the warning, the male teacher began victimizing himself in front of other staff. He told them that the female teacher had apparently humiliated him in front of the kids.

More often than not, women experience unnecessary sexist behavior at work, where male colleagues try to undervalue them because of their gender. In fact, a survey by Checkr of women across four generations revealed that only 11% believe that their male colleagues respect them as much as they respect other men in the office. They also found that the majority (67%) of women believe they’re paid less than their male colleagues for equal work.

Meanwhile, reacting to the post, u/littlemswhoops commented, "And if he walks into your classroom again, tell your students that given that you’ve just witnessed a prime example of mansplaining, that’s what you want to discuss for the remainder of the lesson." u/hexazuul wrote, "You deserve to be furious, and you definitely deserved your students’ applause. I wonder how many write-ups he’ll need before he changes his behavior, unless that is too optimistic."

u/neither-mycologist77 said, "This is exactly what I need to do with a dude in my volunteering sphere who interrupts and overrides me when I'm working with the kids. Thank you for the reminder that I can. I don't think quickly on my feet, so your example will be helpful. I'll run through this scenario and how you handled it in my mind to help me prepare." u/morekeytar wrote, "This is absolutely an underreaction by the admin. Why haven’t they taken the basic step of saying that he is completely in the wrong? Moving his classroom is a big sign that they don’t want to deal with it. This guy will be talking down to women for the next 20 years."

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