“THE COLLEAGUES WILL SUPPORT YOU”
“I've had problems with administration [in my previous school]. I've had plenty of (…) days where I'm screaming at the top of my lungs (…) about what's going on, because this is utterly insane. I felt so disrespected. I felt bad for my students.”
“I've been there, but what I found is—yeah, sometimes the administrator is not going help you. That’s life. But colleagues will. The colleagues will support you.”
“I found my group of tenured teachers I knew who are veterans of the profession, veterans of the school (…) I'm like, ‘I'm in this situation. I need help.’ And they go, ‘We got you. We are going to fight the battle for you, or we'll fight the battle with you, and we'll be there for everything that you need.’ So I found those people fast—and I didn't really have to find them. They found me. Because in a community in a district where there's constant fighting with Admins (…) when a new teacher comes in, the other teachers say, ‘Okay, we’ve got to make sure they don't get killed by what comes down.’”
“They knew. ‘Oh, don't go to that meeting. I'm going first, I'm going to have a side conversation with [them], because we see what's going on.’ ‘Oh, they're sending down the scary email to all the untenured teachers and they're trying to evaluate you. I'm going to go down and tell them why you're so awesome.’”
“There is no issue between the two groups [at my current school]. But still, when something's going on, I know the teachers will come to me and go, ‘Here's what we're going to do. Here's what we're going to do to help you through. Here's what you need to do first.'”
“Support will appear in one way, shape or form. It's almost like in dystopian novels—the resistance rises up.”