teacher diaries: when teachers abuse other teachers… and what I learned from the experience.

It happens. That’s one of the reasons why I started this blog in the first place… and I know, not all the warm and bubbly vibes going into the start of the school year. Except, maybe you feel like I did going into the 2017 school year– unheard, fearful, and questioning if going back to an environment that harms your mental health that no one seems to care about but you. I wrote about it in a little bit more detail in this early post.

What a former colleague did to me rocked my world. I had never been treated so poorly by any one in my entire life– until I whistleblew. I could spend my time writing about all the things she did to me and what I learned from it, but the truth is, I don’t know what the district did to her. She could have been a traumatized teacher too. A teacher who was trying to protect her career, her sanity, and keep herself safe. Maybe she had endured what I was about to experience and she took a different route than I chose. She took the comply route. She took the hurt people, hurt people route. She was scared. That is what I do know. Her behavior reflected that in so many ways and being scared is something I understand. Especially being scared by the people in power in my former district.

I told our head of HR and another director in HR, alongside my administration (which tried their best to help, my former building administrators), that I felt like I worked in a hostile work environment… that I was scared and I was being traumatized. We sought solutions that failed and nothing changed. What looked like no accountability for my colleagues behavior and no accountability for maintaining and creating a safe working environment for me (and my students and other colleagues) was actually an abuse and manipulation tactic being employed by the people in power.

While I do not excuse or condone teacher on teacher abuse, at absolutely all, knowing how my former district treated its teachers, I can’t help but show my former colleague grace. It was never about me. It was always about her and her trying to protect herself.

If you’ve been bullied, harassed, or abused by a colleague and your administration did nothing about it and the central office staff did nothing about it… that’s a sign it’s a part of their culture. That’s how things operate there– no regard for your rights or the law. I would assume in those situations, your colleague, at some point in their career, has had to develop a trauma response to the abuse she/he has endured by being a teacher in a topdown system full of shame and abuse. If you’ve been bullied and someone did something about it and your colleagues behavior still didn’t change, that just might be them then… and I wouldn’t extend the same grace… grace, but not the same type of grace.

This experience has showed me there is a difference. Again, still, it’s not okay…and it’s harmful and should never be tolerated. But in the same way we try not to take students behavior personally because the chance of it having nothing to do with us and every thing to do with them, is the same mindset we need to be reminded of when dealing with teacher to teacher conflicts in our workplace.

I know it sounds bananas, but removing yourself with empathy and perspective taking, truly alleviates a lot of the pain you’ll feel. I know what some of you might be thinking–what if they are trying to get me in trouble and it could impact my job? That’s exactly what I experienced. My job was at stake based on her perception. She screamed at me, slandered me, broke contracts we made with HR, and was cruel to my students and my teammates… she put me down, power tripped over me, and would make false accusations. She did every thing my former school district did to me.

Behavior is learned– for kids and in adults. Fear makes people do questionable things, hurtful things, the wrong things, but also the familiar things… especially during times of trauma and great stress.

We have to be united to break the cycle while having empathy for ourselves and each other. We have to be willing to show grace for people with equal or less power than us. We have to listen and we have to act if we want to make change… We have to include all stories and all perspectives… even the ones that have hurt us. Within each of our stories, assumed or not, because this is in fact an assumption that I feel is very accurate, is truth. Just like I wouldn’t want to harm a student who is acting out as a response because they were hurt by the system, I wouldn’t want to hurt a colleague either. Even if they hurt me.

Fear creates silence. Shame creates silence. Safety creates silence. Trauma creates silence. PTSD creates silence. The ways things have always been creates silence. Money creates silence. Power creates silence.

But also…

Our personal power creates stories. Our stories create perspective. Our perspectives create unity. And our unity can create change.

with kindness | ashley