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| trying to sort something out; co-workers /professional relationships | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 27 2009, 06:47 AM (541 Views) | |
| mathcorechick | Aug 27 2009, 06:47 AM Post #1 |
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Over 100 posts
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i have about three questions about a work thing. 1) has anyone ever brought fleas into work- specifically black/white thinking about coworkers? 2) have you ever changed your opinion of someone after posting/ healing/ getting therapy? 3) in what ways did your relationship with the PD in your life affect your ability to take constructive criticism from other people? alright, here's the sitch. i teach in a very small catholic school. we are horribly understaffed as a rule. this is the start of my 5th year teaching at my current job. my first year teaching at my current job was rough. i had changed from teaching grades 5-8 to third grade (self contained) was transitioning my grandmother from full time nursing care to hospice care and was dating my BPD ex who was an a$$hole. towards the end of the school year we do assessments. my class tested lower then what the school would of liked on the reading portion for what was expected students reading at level, but did show growth of almost a grade level for the students reading behind. The students had also tested exceptionally low coming into my class, as well as at the end of 2nd grade. a teacher who was working in our school on a grant to become a principal (she was considered an assistant principal) came to me and sat me down and said they were very concerned about this situation and that it needed to be looked at. when this happened we had just come back from a field trip, i was sunburned, and actually playing phone tag with a social worker and a hospice worker in order to start the neccessary legal proceedings to get gardianship of my grandmother so she could have a DNR because it was determined she was not competent enough to sign it on her own and my dad and his sister refused to give consent either, a decision made from 800 miles away. i took offense to what she was telling me in the respect that i felt like she was telling me i couldnt do my job and i needed to step it up so i could keep my job. nothing was ever said about it again, nothing in my file, my actual boss never counseled me or made a point to bring it up. my grandma died shortly after the school year ended and my assistant principal had asked me to email her the details about the services ect, which i did. for whatever reason, she didnt show up. she went on to work somewhere else and had all kinds of bad karma. between that and the job thing my feelings were hurt and i started not liking her/trusting her. fast forward to this year. we had two staff members become medically unable to do their jobs. the 2nd grade teacher went ill around easter and never came back. she was not doing her job in the months before she was let go. there was no money to hire a replacement so the 2nd grade class was split for the last 8 weeks of the year, with me teaching the math/science/ss and the first grade teacher teaching reading/phonics/language arts/spelling. at the same time the former assistant principal came out of retirement to take over 50% of the teaching responsiblities for another teacher on the middle school staff who was put on restricted duty. i was not pleased about this because i have decided i dont like this woman and she doesnt think i can do my job based on two incidents in the past but i keep my feelings to myself because i dont really have to work with her. then all the retirements came down and we are now co-teaching together this school year which i was like oh please no.... so we have been having to meet daily to discuss scheduling ect and i think i may have been judging her with the wrong eyes, the ones i used when i was doing the victim thing to myself and 100% enmeshed with my EX and all the stress of dealing with the death of my closest family member. so far my boss is extremely pleased with the planning we have done and the collaboration for cross curricular teaching. she said she had her strongest two teachers in the 5-6th grade and she does not throw around complements likely. we have had equal input in rules, ect (which i was afraid she was gonna try to run me earlier in the summer) and she is not going to be my new work BFF by far, but i think i might be able to have a good working relationship with her. no i am not giving her the keys to the farm and all that, but i think i may have let stinking thinking cloud my perceptions of her. our current common ground came out of the fact that we both got saddled with other people's responsibilties at work and we want to delinate our current teaching responsibilities so everything is more fair then it was last year where i was doing another teacher's job for free and she was working full time but not being compensated as such ( i know this for a fact). i also know now that the former 2nd grade teacher did get an official talk from the boss about her performance on more then one occasion and due to the nature of her illness, she may have not been doing her job for QUITE SOME TIME and low test scores that were attributed to my inexperience that first year really came from the 2nd grade teacher not doing her damn job. they let me do the study that supported this as part of our accreditation in march- what is the irony of that? again, i am going to be wary but i really want to try to reframe the situation from 4 years ago and try to reconsider everything else that was in play at the time as possibly clouding my perceptions. i am thinking that the self-doubt i had in myself at the time came from the lack of self esteem i had from being in such an abusive relationship and i was blameshifting because it was easier to be hurt and mad then to take responsibility and acknowledge that my relationships outside of school may have kept me from being the best teacher (something i know to be true now) anyways sorry this is so long. what do all y'all think? did i potentially misjudge? have you done this? what was the end result? thanks in advance for your input. |
| mathletes do mathletics! | |
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| Charles6722 | Aug 27 2009, 07:57 AM Post #2 |
Over 100 posts
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MCC- Yes, Yes and for #3 I find i am VERY sensitive to criticism, I'm sure due to the BPD in my life, I have to focus on the core of the statement and consider the source, it's something I have to WORK through to try and determine if it's valid. sounds like you are making friends and having a good influence on others.... Brava!!  C.E.- |
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Charles Elliott- "For fool's rush in, Where angels fear to tread" -Alexander Pope | |
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| MNCinderella | Aug 27 2009, 08:16 AM Post #3 |
Over 10 posts
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Hello, I know for myself that as long as I was involved with both my BPD mother an ex-hubby that my reactions to critiques and constructive criticisms was very black and white and they were usually from the vicitm mode and very defensive. High levels of stress and being around people who foster the victim thinking mode do influence me, and I bet alot of other people too. As I have pulled way from these controlling and manipulative people in my life, I have been able to take a more neutral view point of the criticisms that I do get on the job say during a job evaluation. I am able to see beyond the knee jerk "why are you picking on me" to what their real concern was. And the cool thing is that I have been able to improve my work and learn from the other person. If some thing seem petty I ask for other examples to support their concerns to see if it is an ongoing thing with me. Could some of the changes you see between you and this other staff person come also from the fact that you are no longer giving out so many victim vibes and she now see you as being more open and approachable? I noted this when I got my ex out of my home and my mother off my back. I seemed to attract fewer problematic people too. One other thing that I find effects my thinking about the other person is if I sense that they are another BPD who is attacking or trying to control the situation to their advantage and not towards a mutual improvement of my job performace. Such when I made a mistake once during your first year as a new grad on the job, and never repeated it. Yet 9 months later it showed up on my job evaluation as an area of concern. The supervisor could not come up with any other related examples to support her concern, though she supervised me full time that whole year. She could not tell me how that concern was relaivant to the present time either. Luckily I have not run into more than one other supervisor like that in the 20 years I have worked in my chosen profession. Most of them have been great and had good reasons for any concerns they had. They also would offer suggestions and point me towards resources for reading up on things I needed to learn more about. Thank goodness not everyone in management is a BPD who was promoted because they couldn't get along with their peers of bosses, or didn't know how to do their job. Good luck and it sounds like you are well on your way to finding your way out of the chaos and confusion created by dysfunctional Significant others. 
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| To err is human. To think you never do is narcissistic! | |
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| mathcorechick | Aug 27 2009, 03:52 PM Post #4 |
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Over 100 posts
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chuck- thanks! MNCin i feel like i am growing by leaps and bounds and hope that i can learn from a more experienced teacher rather then be at crosshairs all year for false reasons/snap judgments i made while still enmeshed. today we had a rough staff meeting and everyone was off their game. we start school on monday (with kids) and we still dont have all the details down as to who is teaching what, how many kids are in our classes, when our lunches will be. we are also short-staffed and just found out we may not have art/music/gym depending on how shared time is done this year. my coworker and i spoke a little bit after-she vented a little and i listened and we went over some procedures and it was fine. i sincerely hope i am wrong about her. if we end up losing our specials we will be working even more closely together and it will be a very stressful year without any breaks for our entire staff- it will bode better if we can all get along. thanks again for your input! |
| mathletes do mathletics! | |
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| still | Aug 28 2009, 06:11 AM Post #5 |
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Over 100 posts
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By the time I was getting divorced from my X (who quit marriage counseling when the counselor recommended he pursue individual therapy), I had been under such a constant barrage of hostile criticism from him that I had problems processing reasonable criticism or even just seemingly critical comments from others. Rather than becoming more sensitive to criticism, however, I think what happened to me was that I sort of built up an immunity to it. By the time of my divorce I knew that my X's criticisms of me were by and large not reality-based but sprang from his own internal problems. My knee-jerk reaction to others, whose comments may or may not have been legitimate, was to assume that their comments were equally illogical. I found I had to work at trying to see other people's views more objectively and not through the PD-protective filter I had developed. I remember that the stress of the divorce process too - X had turned what should have been a very simple divorce into a major melodrama - took its toll on me too. I tended to view anybody at work getting excited about anything, good or bad, as just more melodrama I would have to endure. It took me a while to get over that feeling too. I'm so glad your relationship with the colleague is going so well, mathcorechick. My hat is off to you for keeping an open mind about the past and making the present positive. |
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| Charles6722 | Sep 1 2009, 05:36 PM Post #6 |
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Over 100 posts
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Still- Good point, I may have developed a "PD filter" of my own......but, it seems to serve a valid purpose. thanks for putting a name on it!  MCC- Hijack is over! |
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Charles Elliott- "For fool's rush in, Where angels fear to tread" -Alexander Pope | |
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| Wornout | Oct 15 2009, 05:37 AM Post #7 |
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Over 100 posts
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I'm late on board here, but there are a few things that cross my mind when reading your original post. First, the test score drama is affecting all teachers and administrators in some way. Some are more realistic, and others are ready to pass blame in order to keep their jobs. In my previous assignment, I had a fabulously supporitve principal. I also knew she'd turn on me if it came down to a dilemma between me keeping a roof over my head and food in my belly vs. her very same needs. That's just the way it goes. It doesn't mean these people are sinister. They are just trying to survive one of the worst moments in history for education. Second, you probably weren't on top of your game when you were dealing with all the issues surrounding your grandmother. You were most likely distracted and disoriented, as you were dealing with a major life issue. That's OK. You are human. You have the right to your "moments" when struggling through this ordeal we call "life." Unfortunately, the world doesn't stop for us when those moments happen. Does this mean you are a bad teacher? Hell, no! Does it mean something is intrinsically wrong with your supervisor turned co-worker? Hell, no! Does it mean that you both will have to struggle with some discomfort while learning how to work together? Hell, yes.  By the way, I dropped out of my masters in ed. program many many moons ago after an instructor questioned my commitment and accused me of cheating. The truth was that I never cheated, but i was pretty wacked out at the time. I think she was picking up on that, but she just targeted the wrong item. My "defining moment" during that time was standing up and walking out her class after she had talked down to me like a child. I still have an "F" on my old masters level transcripts from walking out on that class. (Too late to withdraw.) I went back and finished my teaching certificate a few years later, when I was in a better state of mind. (Still workign on the masters.) And a few years down the road from that, this woman ended up being a supervisor of mine.  You want to know something funny? She doesn't even remember me!!!!  A few years ago, she bragged on me a couple of times. She even sent me a star student teacher.
Edited by Wornout, Oct 15 2009, 05:44 AM.
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| laurena82 | Oct 16 2009, 10:10 AM Post #8 |
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Over 100 posts
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There is something called "a course in miracles"....have you heard of it? Anyhow......one of the premises of this is........ ......nothing means anything..... Basically, our entire *world* consists of OUR INTERPRETATION of a world that **really** has no meaning. ......we (all!) "see" the world THROUGH our "interpretation" of it.... So.....where your mind was at then....you "saw" her in one way......years later....different mindset.....you are seeing her differently. Many years ago (late 1980's) I worked at a place, where there were a VARIETY of individuals that.....well....I could never figure it out......(hah!).....either they ALWAYS had a headache (and were b*t ches).........or....hah! ....they were just always b*tches.........they just NEVER seemed happy.....just miserable people who said/did things that made YOU (me) miserable as well......... I worked at that place about 1 year. Skip ahead 10 years. I took a job back at that place....many of those same folks were still there. However, I had started *doing* the "student workbook" of "a course in miracles" a few months before hand....and was heavily "into" all of that at the time..... do you know what..... (unbelieveable)...... these SAME PEOPLE........were the most WONDERFUL people!......I'd have lunch with them.....learn all sorts of things about them that I NEVER knew 10 years earlier (but was still true at that earlier time....such as how they were relatives to others I knew, etc) It's amazing. We're not talking about ONE miserable person, who maybe became a "better' person 10 years later...>I'm talking about a few people.........hah! ....clearly IM the person who became a "better" person.....by my mindset, I guess. anyhow.... that's what your post brought to my mind..... 
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| mathcorechick | Oct 24 2009, 08:44 PM Post #9 |
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Over 100 posts
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it's been pretty mundane the last couple of months. our boss is pleased on how we have our shared students set up and that we use the same rules/ expectations. i am very glad i was wrong about this. |
| mathletes do mathletics! | |
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8:43 PM Sep 6