Let’s not forget here that we are not talking about using bullying as a tool to get rid of “bad” teachers. There are procedures for that; if you want to argue for changes in that system, let the administration and unions look at those procedures for effectiveness and simplicity, but don’t try to argue that bullying is a good way to “clear out the deadwood.” It isn’t used for that most of the time. We are talking about principals who have a psychological need for power and use bullying as a way to show their power. A targeted teacher is not one who “deserves” to be bullied any more than an autistic child “deserves” it. A teacher is targeted because s/he is a threat to the principal-is more popular with staff and students, is the union rep, knows more about education, doesn’t kiss up, etc. It has little, if anything, to do with competence.
How quickly can this all happen? Our abuse began in the spring of 2003. By the time I left MMS in March 2006, the gang included the principal and his chief enforcer-the office manager, both of my teaching “teammates” (I was literally sandwiched between them in the middle of three rooms), the other union building rep (!), and four or five other members of the “in” crowd. On Day One, my English teammate (who had less teaching experience than me and who carpooled to work with the chief enforcer/office manager [attacks were obviously coordinated during the commute]) and I were assigned to coordinate our curriculums. She presented me with the course syllabus for her English class and when I asked where she was leaving room to support me in my National History Day curriculum as the previous (senior and bullied into retirement) teacher had, She told me that I wasn’t supposed to be doing NHD (with her nose in the air as if mentioning it raised a foul odor)-that eighth grade was going to do that; I just looked at her and laughed. My wife was eighth grade social studies and I knew for a FACT that they haven’t even had the conversation much less come to a decision; in the end, my wife did NHD and the others chose to do easier work. So much for collaboration, except that English had the gall to ask me several months later to teach her district-required unit on Shakespeare because she “doesn’t understand it” and “you’re in theatre so you can do it.” The other union rep, in the meantime, had tried to get me to resign as union rep because I was “too upset” by being moved from eighth grade to seventh (for no educationally valid reason, mind). At one point, she chaffed and denied being an “administrative lackey” (her words) when she resurrected a failed plan of the principal’s to impose sanctions on teachers for committing specific “offenses” which were obviously directed at specific targeted teachers. With the other pack members, the school was not a “safe” place to be. Suspicion was everywhere; it permeated the air. The place was poison. Even the annual “climate survey” showed it, even though bullies and union denied it.
I was not the first to leave; I was in fact, the fifth or possibly the sixth to leave due to bullying and possible sexual harassment. I WAS, however, the first to go loudly. From the end of the 2005 school year to the end of the 2006 school year, fourteen people left the building out of about 45 faculty and staff; I was kicked out, the principal was politely put on a leave of absence (only to appear a year later as a finalist for an upper administrative job), the office manager was told “to go somewhere else” (sweet justice, that), another senior teacher “retired” early; several others went to other districts or just left education altogether.
And the bullying didn’t stop with the exit of our bully; the next principal took up right where our bully left off, bullying one transferring teacher (who was bullied at HIS previous school in the district) from the first day of teacher prep days and utilizing my former “teammates” to spy on him and report any questionable remarks or comments to her as she wrote up a stream of disciplinary paperwork, even scheduling a “counseling” session with him on Thanksgiving Day! By the end of October, he was very distraught over his situation. In speaking to him, I presented his two options: stay and be miserable or leave and save his sanity. He left. She also continued to bully my wife, who worked until December when she hit 60 and, as a PERS I employee, “retired” early. Any district explanation of the bully as a “rogue” employee clearly was false to anyone who took the time to look at the facts.
Administrators' attitude seems to be this: There are 400 or 500 people standing in line to take your job, and if you don't like the way I am running things, quit, or I will force you out and will destroy you.
Until people vote with their feet and quit going into this field will things even have a chance to change.
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