Attacking with Manipulation

Weak leadership and ineffective policies encourage workplace mobbing. Perhaps a team’s responsibilities are not clearly assigned to each employee or roles are established but have some overlap between employees. As a result, it becomes easy for one employee to manipulate another employee’s work. Perhaps administration permits sexual conduct in the workplace, thereby blurring the line between what is appropriate and what is inappropriate. Perhaps a new program or administrative change is not clearly explained or is set up so it specifically damages their target. For horizontal and upward workplace mobbing, employees take advantage of these administrative errors in order to intimidate and terrorize their target. In my school, there was no clear description of how my principals hired ELA teachers, thereby making it easy for them to manipulate who I had to work in close contact with. Downward mobbing, on the other than, intentionally creates and continues these in order to create an environment that professionally, mentally, and emotionally attacks their target. 

I believe weak leadership allowed harassment in my building. In December of 2017, a health teacher sent an all-staff email saying she could not locate a video regarding sex and alcohol. Another teacher then sent a joke to the entire school requesting a single male teacher return the video. I took her comment to imply he had somehow borrowed the video so he could use alcohol as a means to get women to have sex with him. I emailed her privately, saying the joke was offensive. She then publicly apologized, but in a weak way. She said she had a close relationship with him and had already joked with him about it. She then added that “maybe it was unprofessional.” My principal never responded with a “thank you for apologizing for that inappropriate joke,” thereby clarifying that her comment was not a gray area. All we got was silence and the perception that “maybe” it was unprofessional.  

When the school year started in 2017, my principal held his very first staff meeting as our new supervisor. This was an important meeting in setting the tone of his administration. I hoped he would pick up the broken pieces from our previous staff meeting where our former principal dismissed publicly my mobster’s “bird” as just a joke. What I heard that first day was shocking. He said there was “nothing wrong here” and that he could not be “everywhere at once” and it was “up to the staff to set the school culture.” There was no reassurance he would defend anyone from negative experiences should the school culture fail them. Now it was up to us to set the culture as he could not be everywhere at once. He seemed to be empowering the mob in my mind to do as they pleased. 

His ineffective leadership continued that year when it came time to reflect on our school’s culture. Our staff annually completed a nationwide poll caused the Gall Up poll. Repeatedly I completed this form and stated I felt like I had no friends at work. Both of my principals dismissed the results of this study.  Both principals shared the gall-up poll results and told people it is unreasonable for staff to expect to have a best friend at work. This shames the staff who negatively responded to this question. It is counterproductive to ask staff to report complaints and then publicly tell them they are wrong for reporting such grievances. A safe workplace has a culture where staff believe complaints they discuss with administration will be taken seriously. Such shaming directly sends the message to staff that they should not come forward with a complaint as they are just going to be dismissed by administration. 

This dismissal was even more powerful when staff contributed to my administrator’s shaming. This happened at the 2019 staff meeting where my principal discussed our annual gall up poll results. He again reviewed our school culture data from the Gallup poll and stated that once again one low area for our building was having a friend at work. He then opened up the floor so staff could discuss perceived causes of this issues. One teacher vocalized her opinion that any teacher who did not feel connected in our building owned the blame as there were plenty of opportunities for staff to socialize. Other staff expressed similar comments noting a club we have on campus that focused on building staff unity. My principal then pointed out how our building had examined micro-aggressions in an attempt to build equity. 

When staff are allowed to shame staff who come forward with a complaint, a toxic culture is created where staff with any sort of complaint become complacent, fearing social retaliation from their peers. In other words, my principal not only sent the message that he would dismiss staff concerns but also signaled that colleagues would as well without any fear of retaliation. That is a toxic work environment, especially when one considers that some survivors are not allowed to share their harassment experiences due to contract obligations. This event happened after my 2018 sexual harassment charge, a complaint I directly reported to him. Yet he did not state before opening the floor that staff was not aware of workplace interactions like he was. He did not explain that confidentiality agreements isolate staff. Instead he stood by silent as teachers told their peers it was their fault they felt like they lacked friends at work. His disregard for listening to and responding to staff’s concern was only furthered when, in the following school year 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, the staff was not even offered the Gallup poll. Now he showed us he was completely closed off from listening to his staff’s perspectives. 

I have also observed administration regularly abandoning policies that empower its employees. Within two years of filing my informal sexual harassment report, I complained to the district about having one class with over 15 special education kids while my perpetrator had relatively few special education kids. (Looking back, I believe the district was stacking my class to force me to leave.) When I went to discuss this issue with my special education department, I was told that I should take it as a compliment because I was a better teacher than he was. At the end of that school year, I expressed my anger regarding this issue when I read the open-ended questions on the district’s survey. I was told the form was anonymous and felt safe using it as an outlet of reform. Consequently, I wrote a message in the survey that stated I should become a mediocre teacher and then I would have an easier job. This district form was ended immediately thereafter. I never saw a form of that nature again. 

My administration also surprised me when they completely eliminated a team goal form we had to fill out each year. The form identify each team’s goal and then cited evidence on how this team met it. Email documentation will show that I rocked at this form. I wrote multiple goals and demonstrated mastery with 7-8 student programs or lessons I designed to meet it. When administration ended it, their only comment was that they were “ending the form we all dreaded.” I was dumbfounded by this leadership as we then had no vision or target as a team to work towards or to measure our success. Instead we were told to just focus our energy on supporting staff and students; there was no specific area we were targeting, just a message to overall “be there.” 

Similarly, during the summer of 2020, I reached out to the district’s attorney and told them I wanted to meet with the school board to ensure they were aware of my partial 2018 sexual harassment report. He responded that I could not meet with the school board privately due to open meeting requirements. He said he would be willing to meet with me, however. This again did not sit with me as I wanted to know conclusively that the school board was aware of their improper sexual harassment investigations. Talking to him did not meet that need. Consequently, I emailed support staff (and the lawyer), saying I wanted to be added to the school board agenda that night to discuss transparency within the district. She said that would be okay as that issue was not on the board’s agenda that night. I agreed, knowing my question about being transparent with sexual harassment cases would be heard by a large public audience that night as the board was holding its last meeting to discuss new enrollment boundaries for their middle and high schools. In other words, news agencies and the public at large would hear a district employee question their willingness to discuss its sexual harassment investigative practices. Needless to say, I was not surprised when, within two hours, the district’s lawyer called me and told me I could address the school board but they were not obligated to give me an answer that night. I then told him I had a letter written and we agreed I could give it to each board member that night privately. He said that was permittable. Notice I got what I wanted, but only after I maneuver through unclear policies.   

Additionally, my district has inadequate policies related to workplace mobbing, gas lighting, and sexual harassment. We have never examined how workplace mobbing disempowers sexual harassment survivors.  We have never been trained on what to do when we observe someone else being sexually harassed in the workplace. We have never had sensitivity training on how victim blaming statements about students’ mental health issues can hurt staff who experience similar mental health issues like depression or anxiety (i.e. they need to stop using their anxiety as a crutch). We have never discussed workplace mobbing: what it looks like, how to report it, or how to respond when one sees or experiences it. The district has never directly clarified what the code of conduct policy means when it says we cannot “knowingly blame” other individuals for mistakes they did not make. (I asked for this clarification in my 2020 complaint. To date, I still remained confused by this policy.) They have never taught us what to do we if believe another employee is lying or is mobbing us or another employee. And they most certainly never clarified our free speech rights should we see something that disempowered ourselves, our colleagues, our students, or our community. (I know. I asked for this clarification in 2018, 2020, and 2021. All I was told was to get a lawyer.)