I’m still sick. On Thursday Jan 12, I saw my PCP but I was feeling better again at that point. Little did I know what Round #3 would bring. I spent Jan 16-17 (Mon-Tue) in the Emergency Room passing a kidney stone, while still sick with bronchitis. I wasn’t able to get in to work on those days, which upset my boss badly. I really tried. I tried to discharge from the hospital early enough in the morning to get home and shower and make it to work, but it didn’t pan out. Then after that I woke up with pinkeye and was out again. I ended up being out of work from Tuesday Jan 10 through Friday Jan 20. My boss was unhappy and every single day when I called out she would say “See you tomorrow” and I felt like it was unlikely that would pan out. One thing about my boss is that she talks out of both sides of her mouth. One day last week she said she was very concerned about me being out of work again because “This is weeks two and three and kids need consistency.” So finally on Wednesday the 18th I called and got her voicemail and just resigned. I could barely make it through the message because I was so stinking sick. She called back and said “You’re not leaving me, I don’t want to lose a great teacher just because you were sick.” So I stayed out the rest of the week, but when I came back this week I was still way below baseline. I keep going into horrific coughing fits that scare the kids and hurt like heck. But I was dealing with it. I kept going to work, even though I was getting laryngitis worse and worse. Finally, for most of yesterday I was unable to access my voicebox AT ALL and had to whisper everything. This was not very effective, as even other staff could barely hear me when I whispered directly into their ears, so the poor kids were unaware I was even trying to talk to them. Preschool is not a quiet place and whispering over ambient noise was impossible. Tuesday I thought something was medically wrong but I’m pretty sure I was just having a panic attack because I was watching chaos unfold and was powerless to do anything about it. It’s just not possible to work effectively with large groups of small children without using your larynx.
So yesterday it’s the end of the day and the only people left were me, two other teachers, and my boss. She said that she had been watching cameras and she was “not impressed” because “kids are running wild while teachers just sit.” At this point I had gotten my voice back enough to explain that I was unable to do much to control the kids because I couldn’t talk. She just rolled her eyes. I honestly don’t know what she wanted from me. I wasn’t able to make myself better, she didn’t want me to call in sick, and I was doing the best I could with an impossible situation. So I went home, went to virtual urgent care, and got a note for work. When I sent the note to my boss, the conversation went like this:
I can still feel an old therapist Dr. M freaking out at my messages. She would have said that sending her a work note was basically giving her the middle finger. It may not seem like it, but I actually tried very hard to NOT give that impression here. I’m sure I did it wrong, but I don’t know what it would have looked like to do it right. It felt like I wasn’t able to do my job for medical reasons, so I should stay home until I got better.
It also frustrates me that one minute my boss is all sweet and telling me to take all the sick time I need because I’m a great teacher and she doesn’t want to lose me, and the next minute she’s threatening to fire me. I will say that since I’m currently a floater, the kids don’t expect me to come in every day and me taking days to help my voice is not harming them. And the “other members of the team” have been extremely empathetic because they’re the ones actually witnessing me bending over backwards trying to do my job well and they know how sick I am. Throwing the kids and my co-workers under the bus seems unfair.
So yeah, my job is not going very well. I may have to find another place to do my practicum. Unfortunately I have the same professor this semester that I had last semester, and she never ever answers emails so I have no way to communicate with her about the situation. I’m just doing my best to keep it together. I wanted so badly for this job to work out, and it feels unfair that if I lose it, it will be because I had a bad cold that wouldn’t go away. I’m not even on social security disability for that. My disability is PTSD, and so far the main way that has affected me is by giving me an overarching gut feeling that I’m handling this whole thing extremely badly. I feel like another person would have been able to not call out so much and this is my fault.
Another problem at work is that, as I mentioned in a previous entry, I had to report another teacher during my first week. This is the email I sent to the director:
Hi [Boss],
I mentioned on Tuesday that [Teacher] had been picking children up by one arm in anger, but since it was my first day and I’m still in school, I was afraid to fully elaborate. I still have anxiety about this but yesterday I saw [Student 1]’s dad carrying her out the door and I couldn’t sleep last night knowing that I knew someone was really hurting his little girl and I wasn’t doing anything about it. I’m new to EEC, but I’ve worked in public schools for years and I’ve never seen anything like this.
On Tuesday, the kids seemed literally afraid of [Teacher]. She became enraged when the kids couldn’t sleep and handled them very roughly including picking them up by the arm. In my opinion this made it harder for them to sleep but it would have been wrong even if it had worked. [Teacher] especially zeroed in on [Student 2] and [Student 1]. She barked repeatedly at [Student 2], “You’re not allowed to do ANYTHING this afternoon! No puzzles, no art, no nothing because you didn’t sleep at naptime.” She moved [Student 1]’s mat to the floor over by the door and far away from all the other kids. She said that [Student 1] thought she was funny but “She’s far from funny.” I didn’t think she looked like she thought she was funny, I thought she looked scared. If she was acting silly, she may have been using a coping skill that I also use, which is to attempt to use humor to diffuse a situation. For the duration of naptime, [Teacher] was making disparaging remarks about the kids and her tone sounded enraged.
All of this got worse as naptime went on. Today I was in her room again and things were pretty okay until naptime started. I was only there for the first 10 minutes of nap, so things hadn’t had time to escalate like they did on Tuesday. But [Teacher] was already acting intense and growling things like “Oh I see how this is going to go.” She didn’t pick anyone up by the arm this time, but her level of anger and rage was terrifying to me. She handled [Student 3] roughly because she couldn’t sleep. [Student 2] wasn’t there but [Student 1] seemed terrified and cried on her mat.
It’s hard for me to communicate in writing the level of vitriol that was in [Teacher]’s voice. It came across like she was more interested in winning a war/power struggle than collaborating to help the children sleep.
It’s not a fun thing to have to say, but I honestly think at this point that the parents need to be notified and a [report to the state] needs to be filed. Based on what I saw Tuesday and today, [Teacher] is not someone who should be around children in any capacity. I HATE conflict but I keep thinking of [Student 1]’s scared eyes and I have to intervene or she’ll end up with permanent emotional scars.
Thanks for hearing me out,
[Me]
Unfortunately, I was out the entire time this was being investigated, although I was able to talk to some of the people conducting the investigation over the phone on the day I was in the emergency room. The director again sent mixed messages about this. I forget if the word was “unsubstantiated” or “unsupported” but basically, they found no evidence of child abuse. My boss told me that the other teacher involved had cried every night that the investigation was going on, because “this is her job and these are her kids,” and that furthermore, the classroom room was a disaster scene ever since the teacher had been placed on leave with the kids totally out of control. However, my boss ended that conversation with “You know what? You saw something, you said something.” So it’s really hard for me to know how to interpret a long description of all the havoc I had caused followed by what would at first glance seem to be comfort. Never mind the fact that I really have no idea whether I did the right thing. It seems like I must have just been triggered and this poor woman was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I really thought I was helping the kids so it sucks that the outcome was so negative.
In other news, about a week ago my carpool to work cancelled permanently effective immediately. It really was taking a lot out of her and I don’t fault her for it. However, it does mean I have to figure out a new way to make the six-mile-each-way trip to work. I’m trying to get a bicycle but I can’t afford it because I’m having to spend so much money on Uber and Lyft in the meantime. This week I’ve taken a rideshare in to work three times and home twice. The other time I went home by walking a mile and a half in the dark in the snow to the bus stop after a long shift. It’s manageable but not ideal. I was trying to move closer to work but now that things there are going so badly, maybe it’s better that I didn’t. I just want so desperately to get out of this group home.
So. Physically I’m a mess. I’m constantly coughing so hard that it just hurts indescribably. My voice is in and out and the doctor says there are no meds for it and the only thing that will make any difference is tea with honey and lemon. I procured a mug and have been sipping steamed lemonade sweetened with honey. It’s hard for me to drink anything because it makes me cough like CRAZY but I’m doing what I can. I had my appointment with the urologist today and fortunately that went well. He said everything was fine now that I passed the kidney stone. My greatest fear is that this is all psychosomatic, and my body is breaking down because I can’t handle working full time. I don’t want that to be true. It feels like if it is, I’ll be trapped on disability for the rest of my life.
