After this initial advisory meeting with the Principal, nothing further was said either to me or any other person that I know of. It was as though I had done nothing. Ms. Asterisk continued on with her unauthorized interventions into IEP writing. And her advisories continued to be implemented by the Mr. Ampersand. In fact at a succeeding Professional Development meeting Ms Asterisk was featured as an authority on writing IEPs along with the district’s LRE (Least Restrictive Environment) Specialist and Program Specialist. She preceded her instruction during the PD that day with the comment that the district had asked her to participate in this inservice on how to write an IEP. So the three instructors did round-robin instruction of all the Special Ed teachers on the writing of IEPs just as though nothing had been said.
The situation at my school continued unabated probably like many unresolved job related problems of millions of other employees in this country, I had decided to just let it go. Nothing threatened my job and it was better to let the administration handle things the best way they saw fit. But never the less the fact that the law was being violated continued to plague my mind knowing that the best interests of the students were being short circuited causing repeated issues of confusing and contradicting procedures and policies.
Most of all, I felt badly. I felt that I had done my best to uncover a compliance issue with the administration and that business as usual continued on with seemingly little concern for what I had said. And now that I had even verified that what I had said had a factual basis, I had to continue to sign my name to IEPs that had been doctored up with the advise of a woman illegally involved in what she was doing. And at the same time realizing that not even her superiors were qualified or authorized to approve or disapprove of any of it. What had I gotten myself into?
One day when I was alone in my room eating lunch as I usually did to regather my senses for the afternoon classes, I found myself staring at my name written there on the corner of the white board as it had been for years. It came to me in this noontime daydream , that on my very first day of teaching when I was a substitute teacher just sticking my toe into the teaching experience, the very first thing I did while the class was entering the room was to write my name on the board. And the very first thing I said to the class was, “My name is Mr. Overscore.” I realized that everything that was said and done in that class that day was under my name. And I realized that this fact continued to be true to this very day. I became angry, very angry at a system that had apparently forced my to bastardize my name in such a disgraceful and illegal way. I swore to myself that I would find a way to force the powers to recognize their shortcomings and redress their wrongs. But I was confounded as to what could safely be done without threatening my career.
It wasn’t long until an answer came as many answers do from totally unexpected quarters. It happened one day that I got into a conversation with a displaced teacher. I never had known this man, but observed him walking slowly with a downward stare as one would imagine a prisoner walking abjectly in the desert on a forced march. He was short and of a slight frame, narrow face, eyes deeply set so as to obscure their color. Dark unruly hair which seemed to appropriately hang down over his brow swinging with his gate in the abjectness of years of downward looking. Occasionally he would look up not so much to recognize those who surrounded him but to navigate his way to a destination.
I saw that that he was subbing for an absent Special Ed teacher next to my classroom and went into to welcome him during my lunch break since I had seen him in the absent teacher’s room the day before. He soon was explaining to me how he had ended up as a displaced teacher like it was a spiritual burden that had to be dispelled by oral revelation.
“Yes, I was in teacher’s jail,” said the displaced teacher.
“But that isn’t a good reason to displace you,” I replied knowing that a teacher can’t be displaced for being in teacher’s jail. “Is your case still under investigation?” I pried.
“No, I was released without charges.”
“Well, how could they do this to you?”
“They know how to work it if they don’t like you.”
“Why didn’t they like you, if you don’t mind,” I replied possibly prying too much into personal information. “
“I took too much time off.”
“Why?”
“My son is autistic and often has to be picked up at his school when he has melt downs.”
“Are you a single father?” I queried knowing how rarely autistic children are cared for by single fathers.
“Yes,” he replied looking up at me with glassy stare that explained why he so rarely looked up.
“But they can’t displace you for that,” I fired back becoming enraged.
“ They didn’t displace me. I was given an administrative transfer to another school and then displaced. The principal just transferred me. He didn’t have to justify it to anyone.”
I choked on the tea I was sipping when the horrible convulsive truth hit me that the single father of a disabled son had been targeted by the district, “Didn’t you go to the union?” I fired out.
“Yes, I did. But they couldn’t do anything since the principal doesn’t have to give any reason for an administrative transfer.”
“Jez, that sucks,” as I started to put all of the pieces together. And then the question I should have asked suddenly dawned on me. “But why were you in teacher jail to begin with?”
“There were trumped up charges from a student who hated me. He said I grabbed his hand. He talked his buddies into acting as witnesses against me.”
“God!” was all I could say as I became traumatized with the confluence of his experience with similar ones of mine. The difference being the administration didn’t hate me enough to take action.
“So did you grab his hand?”
“No actually he grabbed my hand trying to get a referral I was giving another student who was taking him to the Dean.”
“My God what a mess,” was all I could get out in this dispensation of ill. “So, you ended up in teacher’s jail because of this?”
“The next day. The student talked his parents into complaining to the Principal. They told him that I had injured his hand and he had to have x-rays and an MRI. They had retained an attorney. So the principal removed me from class that day,”
“How long were you there?”
“Three months.”
“And then you were transferred out of the school?”
“Two days after I got back. Even though he didn’t have to, the Principal said that I couldn’t stay at a school in which one of the students had filed a child abuse claim against me.”
“Still that doesn’t explain how you were displaced,” I kept probing sounding more and more like a cross examination. But I wanted to pick his brain. I wanted to know why these injustices were being done and by whom. I was finding that in this man I still was searching for my own answers.
“That was easy for them. It was prearranged that I would be transferred into a school where I would be the person with low seniority in my subject. The district would then come up with numbers showing my department had too many teachers.”
“And then you were displaced?”
“Within a week.”
“And now they have you were they want you – isolated and marginalized.”
“Right,” he said in a bitter tone.
“What a piece that was,” I blasted beginning to see red. “So now you are a pool sub never staying anywhere long enough to cause trouble.”
“Yeah,” he said looking down in the same way he had from the first time I saw him. I could tell he really felt bad, but I didn’t want to say a thing. Didn’t want to let him know how obvious his pain was.
“I’d like to come over and talk again, but I have to get back to class.”
“Ok,” he said summoning the only smile I’d ever seen on him. I walked out the door thinking about this miscarriage of justice and how his feelings of bitterness were so very similar to mine. What I was to find out from this man shook the very foundations of what I thought was even remotely possible in a teaching career.
Barclay Totten (copyright) 2019
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