Social Relations and Behavior

Stereotyping at schools has become big issue.  I am not sure if you can ever fully eliminate it in a school setting.  I have seen it be so bad that a student moved to another school.  I have had personal experience with bullying. 

My discrimination began when my daughter began high school.  She is very athletic and proved herself on the basketball team.  The volleyball team was something else, though, as the coach did not like the fact that Jacy was better than her daughters, and made sure that Jacy did not play her freshman year, and her sophomore year was mad that she did not play better.  Her junior year was better, as she played on varsity, but by this time, many girls quit going out for volleyball due to this coach.  This was also the last year her daughter played too.  Every year this coach’s girls played they were captains when they were seniors.  Guess what happened when my daughter became a senior?  They voted, and decided on other people for captain, and Jacy was not a captain her senior year.  Hence, the bullying began between this coach and myself.

Backing up a step, during my daughter’s junior year, the volleyball coach’s daughter was a senior.  They played basketball together.  Jacy was scoring about 25-35 points a game.  During a game before Christmas, she got hurt and had a terrible sprained ankle.  The blatant comments from the volleyball coach toward my daughter regarding how she should still be playing was ridiculous.  The team lost many games during this time.  The coach also was making comments on social media about me being a “helicopter parent”, a “poor parent”, and would just post very negative things without putting my name on it.  It was so horrible.  Plus, at school, she would get the other teachers together in the hall and talk, and quit talking as soon as I would walk by. 

The teachers in the school would get together and go out to eat, went to a painting party, and went to one others houses.  There was a blatant exclusion going on towards me; and it got worse.  When I would walk into the lunch room, they began ignoring me, along with the failure to include me on outings.  When I walked down the hall, none of the other teachers would give me the time of day due to this volleyball coach.  She had talked so poorly about me to them, that they were afraid to cross her and talk to me.  Out of all the teachers in the grade school, the kindergarten teacher talked to me because she was new and would let what the volleyball coach said go in one ear and out the other.  She really kept me sane during the past two years.

I finally blocked this teacher on Facebook and Pinterest, because I just didn’t need the negativity in my life.  I got to where I stayed in my classroom except to go to the break room to get copies.  I brought coffee in a carafe, had a bathroom in my room, and brought my own lunch.  I prayed that I didn’t have to run into her at all. 

The discrimination went farther than I thought.  When I tried to talk to my principal about all of this, she turned it around and blamed me.  She and the volleyball coach had been friends for over ten years since their girls had played softball together.  So, trying to get help went nowhere.  I was told to stay away from her!  How do you do that when you work in the same building, and your job requires you to talk to her?  You use e-mail!

At the end of last year, the principal came up to me (teaching Title 1 / At Risk) and the 6^th grade teacher and told us that the only position that would be open at our school would be mine as they were combining 5^th and 6^th grade.  The other position that would be open would be the 5^th and 6^th grade combined class across the district.  Now both of us live in town, and I’ve been here for going on twenty-two years, whereas the other teacher (friends with the coach) has been here for four.  She cried and cried about how she lives across the street and doesn’t want to have to drive to the other school to work.  I finally just told her I would take the position. 

The best part is I feel almost welcome in my new school.  The teachers over at my new school exclude me, but I think it is because I am new, and my classroom is at the opposite end of the building than theirs.  Kindergarten through fourth is at one of the building, and my classroom, the art room and the resource room is at the other end.  Before school, during school, after school, and constantly in between, you can catch those teachers gathered in the hall “talking”.  I am probably still sensitive from my two years at the ‘other’ school, but I feel like when I head down to their end, they welcome me, but the feel in the air changes.  Maybe next year when I’m not a new teacher anymore I will feel differently.  I sure hope so. 

The good news is that now that I am no longer in the school setting where the volleyball coach turned all the other teachers against me, these same teachers look at me differently now that they are not hearing negative things about me all the time.  They talk to me when I see them and we carry on conversations.  It is now, how it should have been all along.  Maybe this will open their eyes to how it was when I was there.  I can hope, anyway.

To sum up countering discrimination in an educational setting, block these negative people on social media, (i.e. Facebook, Pinterest, etc.) go to a supervisor or teacher, try to move to a different location, and talk to a friend! They will keep you centered and sane!  I do not know how I would have gotten through two years of crap without having ONE good friend in a mess of back-stabbers!