Navigating Toxic Leadership in Education: Confessions of a Former Teacher

This is a difficult, painful post to write. Even as I sit at my desk, fingertips resting lightly on keyboard, I wonder if I can get it down in a way that helps me do something positive with it. Because IF I’m going to resurrect the past, I want it to be a means of improving the present and the future.

First, some background: In January 1980 I returned to college to pick up the licensing credits needed to teach high school journalism and English in Indiana. Eventually I landed at a high school in a blue-collar town about 45 miles northeast of Indianapolis, where I served for three years as English teacher and publications adviser.

From the outset, several coworkers warned me that our principal, whom I’ll refer to as PC, could behave quite erratically. But he treated me fine during that first year; we seemed to have a solid working relationship. It was during the second year that everything changed.

It started with a learning exercise

For each issue of the student newspaper, the student editor wrote an editorial. I also had her assign one staff member per issue to write an additional opinion piece on any subject they chose for inclusion on that page. First up to write an opinion piece that fall was one of my best and brightest students, Sara.

Sara’s father taught at the same high school and had at one time been the local chapter president for the teachers’ union. He no longer served in that capacity but for many years had faced off against the principal and other administrators in the district over contract negotiations. In this particular year, the teachers’ contract had not yet been finalized.

Being a child of educators, not surprisingly, Sara chose to write about the issue of education. Her opinion piece was well-researched and took a broad approach. It contained no local references or inferences, but the main opinion it expressed was that ALL teachers deserve to be paid more because of the critical contributions they make.

Not long after my students distributed the paper, PC called me to his office. Yes, it felt like being back in school myself, only that then I was never once called to the principal’s office. But I came in and sat down all the same. I had no reason to believe anything was wrong.

But when PC closed the door and walked back around behind his desk I saw the issue of the student newspaper in his hand, folded to reveal Sara’s article. He immediately began raging and ranting at me about it, swatting his desk with the paper. He said he KNEW Sara’s father dictated it to her. “And how could you possibly publish it when contract negotiations are still under way?” he asked.

Sara was a conscientious student. The idea that she hadn’t written this herself insulted her intelligence. I supported her all the way, said the article was well-researched and well-written and what was more, entirely her choice of subject and her opinion. “It’s about teachers’ salaries overall, nationwide, not about what’s happening locally,” I emphasized.

I stated my case calmly and kept repeating my mantra until his tantrum dissipated. It felt like talking someone down from jumping off a cliff, only I was on the cliff trying to convince him not to shove me over.

All shook up from a shakedown

I left PC’s office with my heart pounding and my face flushed. I hadn’t been screamed at by a boss since my undergraduate internship, the subject of my first BN@TB#1, Surviving a Screaming Boss: My Internship Story. And that boss “only” yelled, whereas this guy deployed an array of aggressive body language.

Furthermore, this time around, I wasn’t in a position to walk out or escalate the situation in a way that might get me fired; I was on my own, with bills to pay.

A teacher friend learned how upset I was after, so he and his wife took me out to dinner that night to cheer me up. He, too, had been on the receiving end of PC’s wrath, for god knows what, and his advice was to yell back.

“He wants you to fight with him,” this teacher said. “He wants you to yell back and act like he does. He’ll back down if you do.”

I wasn’t convinced. That went against everything I’d been taught about how to behave. I knew how to state my case politely but firmly, and I did. I didn’t know how to rage and scream and flail my arms around like a monkey acting out for the tourists. And I didn’t want to know. I would not reduce myself to his level.

My recollection is that the rest of that year went okay, my contract was renewed, and I left in the summer thinking fall would be a fresh start.

But I couldn’t have been more wrong

The trips to the principal’s office became a regular thing, each time with a dose of ranting and raving and me being pinned to the chair with a closed door at my back. He accused me of:

Favoring school plays over school sports.
Targeting his sons through a yearbook feature survey that went out to all high school students who were children of school employees.
Crafting “disturbing” publication policies I’d submitted to the vice-principal in charge of curriculum at her request. The draft policies were based on examples from the top two scholastic press associations. It was my understanding we would work on crafting them into a local policy together, but she never got back with me, moved onto a new job, and was not replaced.
Discriminating against a black newspaper student by penalizing her for not completing work on time, even though some white students received the exact same penalty.
Violating another newspaper student’s free speech and freedom of religion by insisting he edit an opinion piece on his religious beliefs from a monumental treatise to something that would fit within the confines of a half-page.

There was much, much more, but these were the highlights. It was all ridiculous and unpredictable. I never knew what or when the next shoe would drop. Sometimes he’d show up in my classroom unexpectedly and sit in the glassed-in workroom at the back, glaring while I conducted a class.

Soon he directed his wrath at teachers who were friendly with me. It got so some of my coworkers avoided me, and while at work I avoided those I truly cared about so he would leave them alone.

Next, performance anxiety set in

There’s a fancier name for it–scopophobia–and it’s an anxiety disorder caused by an intense (and possibly irrational) fear of being watched. Here’s how it affected me:

High blood pressure set in at age 25.
Debilitating headaches started midafternoon on school days. I would go home and lie down with cold compresses on my forehead, the pain pinning my head to the pillow until I could sleep.
Panic/anxiety attacks happened to me at work with physical symptoms of fear, including flushing, sweating, shaking, rapid heartbeat and nausea.

And here’s what I regret the most: Sometimes I inadvertently put some students in the middle. Though I never discussed WHAT was actually happening to me with students, they heard the scuttlebutt. Sometimes I handled something wrong with them because I was under so much pressure to do everything perfectly and avoid being the target of yet another PC tantrum.

As if those tantrums had been possible to avoid. The more I tried, the more I screwed up or not and ended up in that office either way.

Nearing the end of year #3, the yearbook publisher sent a notice addressed to me that we were overdue returning proofs. The principal’s secretary intercepted the notice with the alert printed on the outside and brought it to PC’s attention. He opened it, of course, and called me in yet again. “That book better be finished on time,” he threatened, “or else.”

How it all shook out

The book was done on time, which I would have made sure of with or without his interference because it mattered to me and to the students. All the pages were in anyway; it was just proofs that were late. Easy enough to remedy.

In retrospect, I think a lot of his anger was piqued because he could have had my contract terminated without cause after my second year, and he didn’t do it. And in Indiana, at least in 1985, if a school renewed to a third year, it had to prove cause to terminate; you were automatically on track for tenure.

That summer I spent my time reading and writing as therapy and looking for another job. My symptoms of anxiety virtually disappeared, and in August I was offered a position in the corporate communications department of a Fortune 500 electric utility.

I loved my newspaper and yearbook kids. Categorically. But I never want to be in another principal’s office ever again.

I can’t say I never looked back

I LEFT readily enough. But I’ve spent most of the rest of my life since burying this most horrible period in which I’d never felt so alone, in spite of the constant support of my parents and several close friends.

So why am I excavating it? My husband asked me that same question at lunch when he saw how tense I was after a morning of writing about it.

It’s because this experience came back to haunt me as I thought about an encounter I related in Twisted Pool Talk #3, Navigating Political Conversations with a Talkaholic: Barbie Tales. I wondered in that post what was behind my reaction to my pool pal’s political ranting, and PC was what I came up with. She was combative in ways similar to his. Her behavior was ranting and unpredictable.

In retrospect, PC’s behavior reminds me of how Donald Trump paced back and forth on stage at the 2015 presidential debates then lurked behind Hillary Clinton as she spoke. It was predatory. Don and PC are cut from the same toxic cloth.

Trump was raised by a father who encouraged his arrogance and bullying. PC grew up in the Indiana Soldiers and Sailors Children’s Home for at-risk children, where I’m sure he got a rough-and-tumble training in bullying, both as victim and perpetrator.

Looking ahead instead

Please watch for a followup post as I explore the nuances of the exchange my pool pal and I closed last summer with. And maybe–just maybe–writing about it will help me home in on strategies I can use to take that relationship in a different direction.

That’s the plan anyway.

Have you survived a toxic relationship? Use comments to share…

One response to “Navigating Toxic Leadership in Education: Confessions of a Former Teacher”

rebecca

December 2, 2024

Isn’t it awful to have someone who’s invested in being upset with you? Such a helpless feeling. You were wise to move on (even though it was unfair that you had to). I remember my dad talking about an early boss who would keep pencils on his desk just so he could snap them when he got mad. I wonder who thought these people belonged in management!

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