Attacking with a Quid Pro Quo Culture

A quid pro quo culture must exist in order to reward employees who support downward mobbing.  When employees regularly see a culture of nepotism and favoritism, they understand their career can advance or be hindered if they do not cooperate with administration.  

The example that best illustrates this point deals with an illegal hiring practice I observed in March of 2018.  On March 12, 2018, I contacted the Department of Labor requesting information about filing a formal sexual harassment complaint against my district. The office told me I could not file a complaint as I was past my 180 days. Meanwhile, my ELA teacher was contacted by the principal of one of our high schools that very weekend (March 17 and 18). He told her he wanted her back at the high school and offered her a job on the spot. She said in an email to me that it all “happened so fast.” I do not believe it is a coincidence that five days after I went to the Department of Labor a principal was recruiting my ELA teacher. I could not believe this after I saw who my principal offered the open ELA position to. It was someone I had prayed to work with for years, and I had made this desire know to one of my mobsters in early 2016. 

Once my ELA teacher resigned, my principal now had to find a new ELA teacher for the honors team. Rather than follow the precedent of the former principal (who said it had to be a high school teacher), my principal surprised me on Friday, April 6 when he told me that he had offered the job to one of my closest friends, who was just a third-year general education 8th grade ELA teacher. He did not even open the position up to other, veteran ELA teachers. Now he was telling me he had offered the job to the very teacher I had prayed to work with…and he was telling me a little over a week of me filling out paperwork for a formal harassment complaint. 

I had another reason to be suspicious that something else was going on with my principal’s ELA assignment. His appointment of my friend violated the school board’s gifted education policies. When he told me he had offered the job to my friend, I mentioned she was not qualified for the position. I had read a school board report on the gifted program that dated to February 12, 2018, which said all new hirers for the middle school gifted program had to be certified in gifted education. My friend was not certified to teach gifted kids. If my principal offered the job to my friend, he clearly had to tell her to get certified. He said he was not aware of that school board policy. He told me he would investigate it though. 

When he got back to me, he told me he talked to another administration who said there was no requirement to be gifted certified to teach honor classes. At this point I was shocked. Now two administrators were ignoring the school board’s report. I was a mere teacher, and I knew it. And I wondered why he did not contact the gifted education chair with his question. This administrator would have been the most versed in the school board’s policies towards the gifted program. Seeing illegal behavior, I contacted the teacher’s union president. She told me she remembered that report as she had attended the meeting that night. She contacted my principal, who then finally agreed my teacher needed to get certified. Yet he still was not clear on the school board’s policy. He then incorrectly informed my friend that she had only one year to pass the Praxis test. I reread the policy and told him that was not correct—she technically had two years to pass the test. He then agreed. Had I not spoken up the second time, my friend could have resigned from her position as she was misled to believe she only had one year to pass the test and, after failing that year, had to leave.

I had seen a quid pro quo culture in my building prior to this incident. I felt like my former principal rewarded me at least twice when I ignored mistreatment involving my perpetrator. After my perpetrator refused to help me recruit students for my peer tutoring program, my principal came to my room and asked for help with a parent letter he was sending out about conferences. There was nothing remarkable about this letter as it seemed to be very similar to the one we sent out every other year. What was unusual was him asking me for help. He never did that. I also noted that the following year, my name appeared in the staff handbook next to a student group in our building. There was absolutely no reason for my name to be there. I did not lead, assist, or serve in this group in any capacity. Similarly, after my principal scolded just me for a curriculum mistake (when it actually involved me, my perpetrator, and another teacher), he came to my room and asked for help with an excel document. 

There seemed to be a sort of quid pro quo culture, where if I tolerated someone’s bullying, I got some sort of privilege or special attention from my principal shortly thereafter. I told him I would not publicly praise him in a card and the next day he showed up by more doorway and we talked. A teacher implied I made my bully transfer to another school, I agreed to let it go, and then he played a video that implied my bully was a loser we had to get out of “our life.” I got the impression he was trying to patch up any conflict I had with him. Ironically, my name stayed on the student group for years. During the summer of 2019, I contacted state legislators for the first time about how the district mishandled my sexual harassment situation. Upon arriving back at school that fall, my name was removed from the committee.

In the end ,I have seen my colleagues rewarded for what I perceived was their involvement in a plot to mob me. One of my mobsters became a principal for a high school despite having no official administrative job assignment on her resume. She simply went from being a teacher to being a principal. Another perceived mobster became an assistant principal in my district. My principal, meanwhile, has kept his job and, to date, I have no knowledge he has ever faced any negative consequences from my 2020 report.  The superintendent who reviewed and signed my partial sexual harassment investigation retired and then was hired to oversee our state’s Board of Regents for our public universities. This appointment came after I had gone privately to my legislators, governor, and Department of Education to report I was being mobbed and had experienced a partial sexual harassment investigation under his leadership.  

My disclosure of these events is not motivated by jealousy. I never wanted to be a principal or an assistant principal or any other administrative role for that matter. Then and now, I just want to teach a content area I am passionate about to an age group I enjoy. Unclear and illegal hiring practices make me feel unsafe pursuing this goal. And I also know this perception has hinder me, the survivor, from coming forward.