Mobsters surround their target with a group attack

Mobsters surround their target so it is impossible for them to defend themselves. No matter how the survivor responds, they cannot protect themselves as they face attacks from every direction. By fending off one attack, they are left open for another part of the mob to attack them. Eventually they come to recognize there is no escape except to leave.
An example from my narrative illustrates this aspect of workplace mobbing. 

At 4:37 pm on a Friday, my principal emailed me to state an at-risk student would no longer be in my social studies class or the team’s ELA class. This notification came as a surprise to me and the ELA teacher as it ignored a behavior plan we had just written for this student. Two weeks priors, we reached out to the student’s parents and agreed she had until the end of the quarter (roughly five weeks) to demonstrate improvement or we would place her back in general study classes. This plan was communicated and approved (via an email) to our principal.  Yet now the principal was removing her from our classes ahead of schedule. I emailed back, asking if she was part of our team still, and then left the building for the weekend. 

Upon arriving on Monday, I learned, minutes before her arrival, that she was no longer on our team. I explained this to the student and then sent her to her new 1st period class, an employee who I recognized as a mobster. At this point, one of my mobsters called me and wanted to know why she was not informed about this student’s schedule change. I then explained our principal had made the decision. Immediately after I hung up the phone, a second mobster approached me in the hallway and said the student was upset as no one had called her parents to tell her what was happening.

I felt like I could not win in how I responded to this scenario. My principle had attempted to support my team’s high expectations for students yet he did so in a cloud of confusion that lacked any explanation as to why. It was just a directive: she will be moving. If I bad mouthed this decision, my perceived mobsters could use it against me. They could tell him, which would make me look unappreciative. He could then use their report to say I went public with my sexual harassment complaint not to advocate change but because I disliked him and was vindictive.  (This all occurred after I filed my formal sexual harassment complaint to know my free speech rights regarding my 2011 sexual harassment complaint.)  To do nothing, however, meant my reputation was called into question as I was the one who did not contact the parents or the now upset student over the weekend. I either looked incompetent or disrespectful. I felt like I could not win.  

At team time that week, one of my perceived mobsters showed up and again pointed out someone had mishandled the student’s situation. This was a win-win for her as she looked like she was not in cahoots with administration and was an advocate for student’s rights. Yet I knew privately this was not the case. When the second mobster came up to me in the hallway and said the student was upset by her schedule change, she messed up and signaled there was more to the story than she was telling me.   

When the second perceived mobster met me in the hallway to ask me if anyone had contacted the student’s parents about the schedule change, I replied I had not and that she should send the student to the counselors for a printed copy of her new schedule. She then said, “Isn’t she ELL?” (English Language Learner).  I told her I was not aware of that. I emailed her later in the week and asked her how she knew that. She responded that she remembered seeing her name on an assessment tool she used for her ELL students. She then followed up via an email an hour later, saying she checked and did not see the student’s name on the ELL assessment tool. I, meanwhile, checked our electronic academic records system and determined there was nothing in there that signaled she was ELL. 

When my other mobster came to team the next week, I asked them how staff knew if someone was formerly in the ELL program. I was trying to see if they would lie and also if there was something I was missing in what I was perceiving.  I pulled up the student's online records and showed them there was no annotation system for recording one's ELL history there.  They then, after much probing and multiple inquires, confirmed the only way a teacher could know a student's past ELL information is if they went through a student’s cumulative file. Yet my mobster would not have had time to read the student’s file. My principal emailed us after 4:30 on Friday that the student was being moved. She told me she thought the student was ELL at 8:30 that Monday morning. She had to have learned about the student’s ELL status some other way as she would not have had time to check out the student’s file from the counselor’s office. In other words, someone who knew the student was ELL had to tell her, and I knew all the teachers on my team were never told she was ELL. My perceived mobster was not forthcoming in telling me how she knew her ELL status.  She told me it was from an ELL assessment tool but then later backtracked her story. In the end, I was left with the impression that she had to get this information from someone else, and based on her deception, it was someone she was protecting.