I usually write about my dating life, my struggles, my personal growth, but there is one thing I have yet to write about: my career. We are all so simply afraid to talk about our careers in a negative light because of the repercussion it may have. A legit fear, of course, but one thing I’ve learned is if you stay quiet, you will continue to accept the ugly that no one should really have to endure. I can’t speak for all teachers, but I can speak for myself. I can only shed light on what some of us face on a daily basis and the unfair conditions we go home crying about, sometimes. It sucks.

First and foremost, this isn’t a rant about how people don’t know how much hard work being a teacher is. It also isn’t a “we deserve our summer so shut the hell up about it” either. We do, but if you don’t know how much work teachers do, you’re an idiot, and I don’t have the patience for such narrow minded crap. Every career has its benefits, every career has its struggles, so respect it. This is an eye opener for those who don’t know what some of us endure on a smaller, day to day scale, that impacts everything about our lives.

I’ve recently made the decision to leave my building. The building I spent seven years in. Aside from battling the city, the state, the nation’s ridiculous notions of what education is and what it should be, I knew that in our building we were a team. We faced the outside scrutiny together. We did what we had to do to ensure the state of our building remained in good standing, despite the harsh population of students we worked miracles with.

Now, I’m not saying all Principals and Assistant Principals are evil. I have seen some wonderful leadership in my building, and upon interviewing with other schools, see how some really do respect their staff and their students. Somewhere in the changes my building made, that good leadership made some wrong decisions (or right ones depending on what their secret outcome was). Before you make the assumption that I am some angry teacher who received a bad rating, think again. I was actually rated “highly effective” from the administration that I so impulsively ran from. I’ve been satisfactory and effective for my entire career. For those of you who don’t know what “highly effective” means, it’s some stupid rating system that holds teachers to a ridiculous standard in a 15 minute period. It’s subjective, and if you have a spiteful boss like mine, it could be used against you in 1000 different ways. If used properly, it could actually be pretty useful for a new teacher or for a teacher who really does need improvement, but for the most part, the rubric is actually more ammunition for a power hungry administration to completely tear you to pieces.

If you’re a teacher, and you are lucky enough to have a fair administration, then the complaints you come home with are usually those we all have: the system is unfair, the children are disrespectful, you want to help, but the kids don’t want to help themselves, etc etc. Normal. But if you’re a teacher, and your administration is unfair, the struggles are different. There’s a clear distinction between a tough administration and one that violates your human rights; I have had the pleasure of someone completely violating my existence. After my experience, I believe those who want to be “leaders” should be psychologically evaluated first.

After many stints of harassment where I was literally stalked, for example, receiving multiple drop in, visits, checks ins “just to see what I was doing” during my lunch periods and after hour texts, unfair evaluations such as giving me a developing for giving a student a pass to the bathroom, childish “no one likes you” comments in meetings sometimes held beyond the school day, blatant disrespect in front on my students and my colleagues, I cried. I cried not because I was sad, I cried because I couldn’t jump across the desk like a tiger and rip this prick’s face off. I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say, I couldn’t do what I really wanted to do, I was trapped. I was trapped because this ridiculous excuse for a leader messed with the license I worked so hard to achieve. Giving low ratings gets you in trouble, as a teacher. Don’t get me wrong, there are teachers who suck, teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, but when you have teachers like me, ones who are actually doing a fantastic job have their license, reputation, livelihood, and peace of mind on the line, life changes. I don’t know one teacher who lives life under a bad administration stay healthy. We live with severe anxiety, sleep deprivation, and depression. There is no rest. And that is the most unfair part.

This is what some people don’t get. Being a teacher is hard as it is: the schooling, the testing, the planning, the grading, the students, the system, the world. Throw in administration that makes your life miserable, and you have a very unhealthy human being. I know from myself: I have never had so many internal medical issues as I have had the passed year and a half. Stress can really screw you up.  I’m on vacation, I’ve had an official transfer to another school, I’ve reported the behavior to the UFT (united federation of teachers union), but still, I can’t rest. I know why. It is because I know this specific administrator will continue to make the lives of others miserable, because he is so severely damaged himself. What makes him damaged? I have no clue, but I sure as hell won’t allow this to continue happening to the teachers I worked with for so many years. So many of us, women only, in the English Department of my old school building, have endured such misogynistic, abusive, discriminatory, harassing, micromanaging, violating disrespect, and I am angry. I am angry for all teachers, in all buildings, who work their butts off and get crapped on by bad administration.

This HAS to stop. I don’t know how to make it stop. I have no idea how we can get bad administration to stop being bad administration. No one helps. No one wants to help. The only thing I can do is speak out about it and hope that others do too. Respect me. Respect our teachers. Respect the men and women who teach your children, who love your children, who help your children grow and learn and be better people.

Respect us.

Help us.

Speak out.