I have noticed that the students always expect their teachers to drop everything and help them first. They call and text at odd hours, come to them for their personal problems and expect the teacher to fix all of it.
How do you remain empathetic and still have strong boundaries with the students?
I went on maternity leave and no body picked on the long term sub, 1 factor was my school location is at a known bad community. The admin placed another SPED teacher in my absence to cover my cluster classroom since she’s an inclusion teacher with only two students. Before I left, I arranged my classroom and kept some important personal stuff but left almost all intact in my classroom for her to use during my absence.
When the school was almost ending, I texted my SECA asking if the school already started clearing things in the classroom so I could give special instructions for my stuff. I am also about to email the sub, since when she started working in my classroom she did not reach out. But to my surprise, the SECAs sent me pictures that hurt me so deeply that I cried. They told me that the moment she stepped into my classroom, she took my materials off the wall and threw them in the trash without my permission. I had no idea this happened. She turned my classroom upside down.
Another teacher saw her ripping my stuff and threw in the trash bin and asked her if she has asked my permission. She said “YES, I already emailed her.”, my SECAs heard it too. My classroom SECAs even asked her if they could keep my materials so I could still use them when I returned, but she told them to just throw everything away or put it inside trash bags. My SECAs told me that she just let all students run around the classroom and ruined all my stuff, and when they told her about it, the teacher responded with a laugh.
I told my teacher friends to help me salvage what’s left and they brought me 2 black large trash bags and said that these are what’s left in your room. They told me that nothing was left in my classroom that the sub teacher ordered to throw them away. I tried to sort my tasks boxes that I made from scratch but it’s impossible to recover everything. I cried and emailed the admin about what happened and included all the people that have witnessed from what happened including the sub teacher involved. No one responded even my principal aside from the sub teacher telling me “Thank you for letting me know your point of view.” I was furious and went back to therapy to help me get over it. I was truly hurt from her lack of empathy and concern for my classroom. I spent effort, money, and time building that classroom, and she ruined all of it. I am not asking for repayment. I am simply asking for a sincere apology.
A teacher told her to talk to me and ask for an apology but she arrogantly said that I “don’t have proof,” and that if I wanted my things kept properly, I “should have emailed her.” Those lines hurt me again, and I cried so much over it. What’s even more painful is that the admin did not bother to help me or even acknowledge what happened. I started again from scratch, recreating all the materials I lost.
I forgot to mention that this teacher has been mad at me since last year, when we had a school activity and she didn’t want me to include a teacher she hated. She started hating me after I told her that we needed to set aside personal feelings because we are all professionals.
Now, I am dealing not only with my C‑section healing and postpartum, but also with what she did. And knowing I will see her every day, walking around the school boasting that she’s happy because the principal favored all her wishes, hurts even more. She was placed in the resource class — the position I wished for — with only two students and a classroom SECA.