Hi, I am not sure if I want advice so much as support.
I am a teacher in a secondary school working just below the rank of assistant head. However, I am still fairly new in teaching, I qualified aged 43 about 5 years ago. I think I am being bullied by someone of the same rank as me - she is the Head of the faculty.in which I teach, my own role being at the same rank but across the whole school.
She has always been cold and unpleasant, even before I qualified, but I could sort of cope because there were 2 others she bullied and we supported each other. One has now retired and the other took a sabbatical year. Since then I think I am the only one.
The bullying takes various forms. In meetings she ignores or talks over me. She often puts out vital information informally at lunch in the team office - I have my own team office and since it is an IT based team project I have to use particular machines and I just do not have time for lunch. This means I often do pointless work or seem out of step. She loaded me with a huge amount of a level teaching of a syllabus I have never taught. I asked to go on a training course and she refused, but sent a colleague. About three months ago, we were put as a school on Notice to Improve; I was devastated to receive a letter telling me I was in a category of "needs improvement"; on investigation - after I pulled out my perf man which showed every target met, my outstanding lesson observations, and my results which were way above average, the person who sent the letter said it was sent because "x gives you a bit of a bad press".
The day before Christmas we had to moderate coursework on the course for which I was refused training. It appeared I had missed one aspect of the assessment objectives. I had to work through the holidays to get students to improve. I came back to an inset day to another issue. Basically I have a c/d borderline y11 group. In the English marking debacle, about half did not get their target. I repeatedly asked her how we were going to deal, and heard nothing. So then I told her I was going to redo the unit with them. I utterly slogged myself into the ground pre xmas to do this. On the inset she feigned surprise that I had done it, and announced that she was re-jigging the groups and it was ruined by this. Others appeared to know but I did not. I assume she told them informally at a lunch, not formally in a meeting.
I cannot explain easily what happened next as I was so stressed I almost fainted. I went to the Dr next day, taking my first sick day in a year, and she diagnosed vertigo. I was off for a week and felt much better. I have a final appointment this morning at 8.30 to check BP etc and then I would go back. I was dreading it but heigh-ho.
Last night I read my emails and discovered that she has rejigged the groups while I was away. Basically all my successful students, who got their grades in their module, have been removed, leaving me with the unsuccessful ones. I will still have a target to get the same percentage at target. Again I cannot explain what happened next as my head was spinning and I felt sick. I could not stop shaking and crying.
I sent an email last night to my line manager in my Head of Faculty role - he is also hers. I had spoken to him about it before, after the training thing, and he spoke to her, after which she smiled more but nothing else changed. Ofsted then rather took over all our thoughts.
I cannot stop myself from thinking this is all my fault and I am crap. I cannot resign, if you look at my other posts you will see DH's business has collapsed and I am the breadwinner.
Help please, and please be gentle.
Thank you
Sleepysand
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bullying making me ill
11 replies
Sleepysand · 14/01/2013 06:02
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