This happened around twenty years ago when I was a teacher in a suburban school.
I was appointed to my position, working with a great, mature principal with whom I got on very well. I could go into his office after school and talk over things and get his advice on how I could improve my teaching. We remained friends in the years to come.
A couple of years later he resigned his position. The outgoing principal advised me to resign as well, because he could foresee future problems in the school and that I’d be better off out of it. Foolishly I ignored his advice, and I suffered for it as we will soon see.
A new principal was appointed, and things went well at first. The first hint of a problem was that the Chairperson of the Board of Trustees resigned and the word got around that she was pressured out of her role. I knew her well and she was the type of person who was not going to be anyone’s “yes” person, and it became apparent that the new principal had designed that he was going to be “the king of the castle” and no one was going to get in his way.
The new head of our teaching block was the newly appointed deputy principal, and we initially got on well.
During the year the new senior staff were appointed, there was a spare teaching position in the school, and the principal was planning that his wife was going to take up that position once she graduated, registered as a teacher and gained her practicing certificate. But when statistic revealed that the school roll had fallen to the point where the spare position disappeared, the principal had a problem. When his wife qualified, there was no position in the school for her to come to, and because her training was conducted mainly by distance learning instead of at a college of education, it was thought that she would find it very difficult to get a teaching position anywhere in the city.
This is where the principal decided on a plan. If he could get a staff member to resign, then his wife would be able to take up the vacant position. The board of trustees would not stand in the way, because the new chairperson was inexperienced and was basically “under his thumb”. That’s when he decided that I was the weakest link.
I had just had my yearly performance appraisal and was deemed totally satisfactory. But he decided that I was incompetent, and in a meeting in his office, he said that I was not performing satisfactorily and that I should resign. If I knew then what I know now, I would have recognized that as “constructive dismissal”, written minutes of that meeting as a documentary record. I resisted, and got the teachers union involved.
Also, the deputy principal started to find all kinds of faults in my teaching, which actually resulted in bullying, and I realize that this man was being the principal’s “hatchet man” to make my time at the school so difficult that I would resign. The union advisor told me that the principal and deputy principal were not my friends, and I would be better off finding another position. This led me to think that the union advisor was playing both sides instead of standing up for me.
So, I started applying for positions, and landed a senior teacher’s position at a local intermediate school. This was a promotion for me. It was reported to me that the principal was so angry that I was going to a promotion that he telephoned the other school in order to bad-mouth me and try to upset my appointment. Also, I found out later that he got my two referees into his office and demanded that they cancel my references. I wanted to go to the Employment Services to complain but these two teachers begged me not to because if I implicated them, the principal would make their lives in the school a misery. Out of respect for them, I didn’t take it further. In retrospect I should have. I was also told that the guy had told other staff members not to give me any support.
However, I wrote to the Teachers Council and told them that I did not consider him an honorable person and detailed to them that he pushed me out of his school to make way for his wife.
I found out later that because he didn’t want any Asian teachers in his school (there were three Asian teachers there), he forced them out by falsely accusing them of being incompetent. I knew that this was totally unfair and illegal, because they were three of the most loved and competent teachers in that school.
He had aspirations of gaining a position in a larger school, but over the years, although applying for positions he was never successful. I think it is because word had got around about how he was treating good staff unfairly and no one wanted to appoint him. After quite a number of years, he moved effectively sideways into a similar school in another part of the country.
I have written this account to warn teachers to document everything, even if they think that everything is going fine for them in their school. It is a good idea that for every two weeks, email the principal for a report on their teaching and asking for any advice he can give them to improve their teaching practice. Also, if they have to send a disruptive pupil to the office for correction, follow it up with an email describing the problem and asking for a response of what was done to correct the misbehavior. If the teacher suspects that he is being micro-managed and excessively criticized, email concerns to the principal, take a support person, preferably the school union delegate, to a meeting and have the meeting minuted. If the bully continues or if the principal sides with the bully, continue to document every instance, and send a copy to the principal. Then, make an appointment with the Employment Service and forward copies of your documentation to them.
I would be reluctant to trust the teachers union, because I have heard of union advisors and field officers “running with the fox and the hounds” in order to try and come to a compromise, instead of calling a bad or manipulative principal out on his illegal conduct. I would go directly to the Employment Service because they are there to fully support employees who are being shafted by these arrogant school principals who think they can treat their teachers any way they please.
What comforts me is that this particular principal is nearing retirement, and has never been able to achieve the promotion and the higher salary level that he expected. He will remain a small-time principal of a low decile school in a part of the country where no one knows where it is and if they did, they wouldn’t want to go there.
