Aspie Teacher Concerns About Aspie Colleague

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Hello All!

I'm an aspie teacher. I teach Culinary Arts at a small rural high school in Nevada. I have a colleague at my school who is also an aspie teacher. She's an older woman with a Ph.D. who works with emotionally disturbed children. This woman ... I will call her Rachel (which is not her real name) has been having problems with the special education coordinator at my school.

I have witnessed some of these problems. During an IEP (individual education plan) meeting which is required annually by IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act - a U.S. Federal law that protects the rights of special education students in grades K-12), I observed the coordinator YELLING at Rachel. Rachel had apparently filled out the wrong forms and was being publicly berated by this other woman.

"Could you please tell me what you want me to do?" asked Rachel.

"I'VE TOLD YOU AND TOLD YOU AND YOU NEVER LISTEN TO ME. YOU NEVER LISTEN! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?"

It was bad enough that this woman was yelling at my colleague in front of me. What made it worse was this woman was behaving this way in front of a PARENT and her CHILD. The child was one of Rachel's special education students. This student has anger management issues (which is why she is in a self contained classroom for emotionally disturbed children) and she certainly didn't need to see an adult at my school behaving badly.

After the meeting was mercifully ended, I fired off an incident report to the building administrator. There was no reply.

Rachel came to talk to me after school. She was understandably upset by what had happened. I urged her to talk to the principal and she agreed that something had to be done ... but she never went and talked to the principal.

So a few days later, Rachel again came to me after school. She was very upset. Not only had the coordinator again berated her but this time she called my colleague, "Stupid."

I told Rachel that I had sent an email to our principal to complain about the coordinator's behavior. I asked her if she had also made a complaint and she said no. When I asked her why she said that she didn't think the principal would do anything.

I then told her about my experience with the office manager. During the summer, the office manager did not want to let me have access to my Culinary Arts room because she said I wasn't due to report until August 19th. When I told her that I just wanted to drop off some boxes of professional materials, she REFUSED to give me access to my classroom. I was fortunate that the principal overheard us and the PRINCIPAL gave me access.

A few days later I returned to school - this time to unpack my boxes and to also get an idea of what sort of tools and equipment I had in the kitchen.

The office manager would not let me into my room. She said that I wasn't supposed to be on campus until August 19th. I explained that the principal had given me permission to be on campus but the office manager said that she didn't care. She didn't want me "underfoot" and "bothering the custodians" never mind the fact that while we were talking, I saw at least 3 other teachers on campus who were clearly working in their rooms ... which begged the question, why were THEY allowed to work in their rooms but not ME?

I didn't want to argue with the office manager, so aside from one before school catering event that I was asked to do by the principal, I stayed away from school until the 19th when teachers across my district reported back to work. My classroom and kitchen were in complete disarray, no thanks to the office manager, and the time that I could have spent unpacking and organizing had instead been spent at home where I watched movies, live streamed TV shows, read books, and puttered around my kitchen ... all great fun but not terribly productive.

After the school year started, I began purchasing supplies for my Culinary Arts classroom and incurred the wrath of the office manager because I had been working with the school banker instead of the office manager. At my previous school (which is part of the same district), all accounts were handled by the school banker but at my new school, the banker handles one of my accounts and the office manager handles two others.

How was I supposed to have known this? I had assumed that the policy which applied to one school should apply to all schools since we're part of the same district.

"WELL YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN!" yelled the office manager ... who then went on to berate me for not following procedure.

Although I can handle unruly children, secure in the knowledge that so long as I follow school law, district and school policy, my classroom rules, and my progressive management plan - I KNOW that administration has me covered. If the child becomes disruptive, talks back to me, is insubordinate, or uncooperative in any way, I can always send the kid to the office.

Adults who yell at me are another problem.

So when the office manager was angrily shouting at me, I tried to leave and the woman physically stood in the doorway of her office to keep me from leaving. "NO, you CAN'T LEAVE!" she shouted. "YOU HAVE TO LISTEN TO ME!"

It was an awful experience and since this happened before school, it sort of threw me off my stride for the rest of the day.

I told Rachel about my experience and also told her that I finally went to the principal. The principal knows that I'm autistic. She also knows that Rachel is autistic.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, I requested "reasonable accommodation" i.e. I wanted the office manager to stop yelling at me and to not physically block me from leaving if she was on a rant. I told the principal that I could not work under these conditions and offered to resign if my request could not be met.

My request was met.

The principal talked to the office manager. She's not allowed to yell at me. She's not allowed to physically block me from leaving if I need to leave. She's not even allowed to initiate contact with me. If I need to talk to her and I do because she controls two of my culinary accounts, I'm allowed to take an NT colleague with me to act as moral support and to also act as a witness just in case the office manager is having a bad day and decides to again take out her frustrations on me.

I shared this story with Rachel to illustrate the idea that the principal really does pay attention and is supportive of her teachers.

Rachel sniffed and pointed out that I teach Culinary Arts and that she had only heard nice things said about me by teachers, parents, students, and building administration. One of the parents who is also a teacher at my school told me that I had taught his son MORE during the first six weeks of school that my predecessor had managed ot do during an entire year. It helps that I'm a chef instructor and that I believe in teaching hands-on production by actually being in the kitchen. I understand that my predecessor talked about Culinary Arts. The students read various Culinary Arts topics and worked on bundles of worksheets ... but they were not in the kitchen very often and this shows because my level II students don't have the skills sets they should have and I've been having to do remedial instruction because they didn't know how to use knives, they didn't know any basic knife cuts, and they didn't know how to make sauces, produce side dishes, or to multi-task in a kitchen. But I digress ...

Rachel told me that the school needs me more than it needs her. She also said that she didn't think the principal would even listen to her.

"How do you know if you don't try?" I asked.

She shrugged.

"Pretend I'm the principal," I said. "What do you want to tell me?"

She mumbled something about how the special coordinator is mean.

I interrupted her. "You need to be more specific. Being mean sounds like an opinion. How do you KNOW that she was mean? What did she say?"

Rachel mumbled something about being called stupid.

I interrupted again to ask her if she was more articulate in writing or speaking.

"Writing!" came the response.

"Well then ... why not write her an email to explain your concerns?"

She nodded.

"Are you going to write to her?"

She shrugged.

(sigh)

I hate seeing my colleague being used as a proverbial door mat. In some respects, Rachel is stronger than I am. She's the only aspie I know who can make direct eye contact and hold it for an extended period. She's also socially gregarious and seems to enjoy meeting people. In contrast, I do not make eye contact and I'm not comfortable talking with people about non-work related topics.

On the other hand, I will NOT back down from a fight if I perceive that my rights are being violated. I stood up to the office manager and things have been better now for about a month.

Rachel is an aspie doormat. We just completed our 8th week of school and the special education coordinator has been berating and insulting Rachel all this time ... and Rachel has NOT stood up for herself and this on-going experience is really stressing her out.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I can get Rachel to stand up for herself?

It sounds like Rachel has low self-esteem issues that are blocking her from asking the administration from interceding on her behalf. You may have to sit down with her and help her write out the letter to the principal. Documentation of events is very critical in her case. Unfortunately, when the letter is written, it is very likely that she will not want to send it for fear that it will backfire on her. I do not know what can be done past that point if she does not take action.

I am basing my advice on a past occurrence with a similar situation. When I was in graduate school, I dealt with a research adviser who acted much like the problem coordinator in your post. He became verbally abusive and threatened physical violence against me on several occasions when he did not get the results that he wanted. (In chemical research, not all experiments are successes. He thought that they should be.) He was the professor and I was just a lowly graduate student who had to put up with his #%^ according to him. I started documenting his bad behavior and passing it along to the head of the department. In the end, it came back to bite him hard as he had violated several graduate school rules for college professors (and I held the evidence of this against him). The net result was that he failed to receive tenure and was forced to leave the department in disgrace. People like him should never be professors.

If I did nothing to prevent his actions, he would have forced me out of the PhD program and blamed me for everything. At that point, I would not be able to defend myself because I would have left, so everyone there would think he was in the right all along. So, you do have to mention to Rachel that there comes a point in time where a line is drawn in the sand. If she does nothing to stop the issue, she becomes the net cause of her problems, not the coordinator.

Ridiculous, but not incredible.

In my office I had a manager scream at me on a conference call and nothing was done. I NEVER raised my voice at her, but did give my opinion on something in which indeed I WAS THE EXPERT at the time. I was right, she was wrong. She belittled me and yelled at me to the point that my manager at the time told me "X, hang up the phone...everyone else, please hang up". My manager did try to do something, but this other person knew too many people, was actually one of those sleeping around with many of the guys higher up and nothing was ever done to her.

By the way, that same person years before had yelled at me in front of about 20 other people because I was writing a document and I wrote "we need all the solutions that the system returns formatted and returned to the GUI..."...she belittled me because she wanted me to write down "we need UP TO 20 options or MORE"...hmmm I told her I didn't understand if she meant only up to 20 options and no more, or as many solutions as we could get...She yelled and said "you don't understand? I said we need up to 20 options or more"...So I asked, "so if we only get 10 options is that ok"? She yelled again and said "if that's all we get then yes, but if we can get up to 20, then we need 20"...so I said, but what if you can get 100, do you want 100 or 20"? She again yelled at me and said "we need up to 20 options or more"...ugh WTH?
PS yes, I was told I was being rude, not her...go figure...

I had another guy from the UK send me the nastiest email you could imagine, yell at me on another phone call as well, just because I was told he was the ONLY one who could answer a question for me and after 3 weeks of me taking a delay, I kept asking him to please answer so we could get our project back on track. He did this again on a phone call, by email, I had proof that I was always polite and yet, nothing was done to him.

This has happened so many times while I worked at that company, that I soon realized it didn't matter how I treated them, those with the power, even if they were idiots, would get their way and bullying was truly just a way of life in that company. I can't imagine ever working for any company again. I am done.

PS interesting, these are the people with the good social skills

could you accompany rachel in her visit with the principal? it might help her if she had some support, especially from you because you don't have an issue with confrontation. have you told her why you admire her yet? it might also help if she wrote down bullet points before going to see the principal in case she shuts down.