The heartbreak and abuses of teaching…
Today I found myself crying on the floor of my ensuite as I cleaned out my cat’s litter box. I’d been thinking about the book I’d but down to get this chore done; I’d been thinking about how to explain the book to my husband when he got home, and then I just started crying.
The thought has triggered a series of lessons that I had once prepared for my Year 10 class, less than a year ago. I had worked so hard on those lessons, I was so proud of them, and my students had engaged with them better than they had on other topics. They’d been working out so well that I was able to share them with a colleague who’d been struggling with the topic. It all made me think about how good I was at my job, and how it breaks my heart to think about when I was a teacher.
I loved what I did, but in many ways, I lived as a victim of abuse. That series of lessons that triggered my crying today had come from my knowledge that I’d specialised in for two years before I even became a teacher. I knew it inside and out (I still do know it inside and out). All I can think of now is how my colleagues would challenge my lessons and assessment tasks. I’d be pulled aside for meetings and told that I was not a “team-player” and didn’t communicate enough. So I’d adjust my behaviour, make more of an effort to increase communication, share ideas, and work with my team, then it would be something else I hadn’t done right.
In some ways it was like gaslighting. I knew what I was good at; I knew that my approaches were working and that the quality I was delivering was to a high standard, but at every turn, the rules kept changing and they made me second-guess what I was doing. “Remember last week when we spoke to you about this project? We wanted you to present information on this topic — where is your contribution?” And I would be like, “But you asked for this information on this topic, and I created content and resources like you asked, and I checked with you.” Then they would pull apart my work and change it right in front of my eyes, changing all thing instructions that they had given me and making all my effort a waste. They’d like my ideas one day, specifically asking me for more details, then the next day I was accused of going off on my own and not communicating my ideas with them. I’ve been the victim of gaslighting, unfortunately, before, so they weren’t going to get me, because I knew the truth: that I was good at my job.
The further I went out on my own to overcome this feeling of being boxed in and undermined, the more that attack seemed to grow. I tried to seek help and have some change occur, by the systems within the school were so entrenched that those “changes” were mere appearances and the following week I was trying not to cry. I’m pretty sure I failed as I did cry in the staffroom and even walking down a corridor of the school. I managed to avoid crying in class with my students. The problem with this approach to perseverance through these trials was that I was becoming increasingly isolated. And perhaps that’s what they wanted as it left me spiraling and those questions we ask ourselves when things seem to becoming less and less clear were becoming prominent in my mind: “Am I crazy?”, “But I did what I always do, that have been approved of in the past”, “What am I doing wrong?”
My husband asked me last night if I missed teaching. I told him that I did, sometimes. I told him that I missed the students sometimes, they beautiful people who just needed to be supported and believed in so that they could break through their own perceived limitations. I told him that I missed doing what I was good and being part of something bigger. And I told him that I wished I could have made the contribution and difference to education that I dreamed of.
Anyway, thanks for reading today, my tears have almost stopped, which is good. I don’t know what the next step is. It’s really hard describing who I am these days; it gave me a great sense of purpose being able to call myself a teacher. I don’t believe I was terrorised to be point of being made to leave teaching but I just don’t know how to reconcile all that abuses and heartbreaks with the love that still lingers for being a teacher.
