The Gaslighting of America's Educators and School Staff
I was recently reading through a piece that was written about institutional Gaslighting. For years the Bats Quality of Work Life team has been doing amazing work around Workplace Bullying and Harassment and gaslighting has been a part of these conversations. Since we have joined with the National Coalition on Workplace Bullying, the intensity of what people have experienced at work has only intensified because now these broader conversations now include people that work outside of educational workspaces. So this topic has been coexisting in my mind with the looming topic of reopening schools.
But when I started to read this most recent article, the two topics joined and formed quite a scary relationship.
gas·light
/ˈɡaslīt/
Learn to pronounce
verb
gerund or present participle: gaslighting
manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity.
Educators all over the country became victims in March. We were fighting to have schools closed in many states because we saw the danger of COVID, even before it reached the United States. Many of us were mentally preparing for it in January. As the intensity of the virus rapidly grew, so did the intensity of some of our victimizations, as evidenced in New York City where educators led by the MORE caucus were rapidly communicating to teachers and staff that they should consider calling out sick because work conditions had reached a point of being potentially life threatening. Yet the NYDOE was pushing forward on messaging that schools could not be closed because the students would have nowhere to go. Intimidation and harassment at a public level were used, and still are being used, to try to downplay the dangers of the virus. Even then, we learned that it was too late as we witnessed educators succumb to the virus to be lost to their families and students.
"When interpersonal injustice – discrimination, harassment, or assault – is perpetrated within the context of an institution such as a workplace or school, the institution often responds with action intended not to understand the transgression, but rather to protect itself by silencing the victim or survivor. While the individual is already vulnerable due to the precipitating harm, “institutional betrayal” often causes the victim to feel doubted and unsupported.” MICHAELA KENNEDY-CUOMO
Now, as we look upon reopening schools we look at it through the eyes of a victim. Let's be real here. A great number of us are suffering from PTSD as a result of what we experienced in March. I'm not even diving into the trauma that an individual may be carrying due to the loss of a family member or a friend from COVID. I'm thinking about the anxiety that was caused by decision makers as we were basically told that our lives did not matter to them and schools needed to stay open. Until the time when they didn't. Schools were closed nationwide and educators across the county breathed a collective sigh of relief.
But that period of rest was short and not very restful. We pushed for meals and other services for our communities, diving right in to volunteer through our school districts and community organizations, even setting up our own Mutual Aid networks. We dove right in to reflecting upon what had happened, analyzing the inequities that were brought to the level of blatant exposure by the virus and immediately began pushing a national conversation about how to address these inequities. We've called for a total reimaging of schools.
A level of stabilization started to be felt and then the full impact of racism slapped us all in the face. The murders of Breonne Taylor and George Floyd exposed the ugliness of our country for the world to see. Some of us felt this racial trauma on an intense personal level while others of us grappled with this newer realization that racism is extremely real and we still play a role in perpetuating it. Images of our own family, loved ones, or students being murdered by police slammed hard against our inability to physically surround ourselves with our people and we have been left raw to deal with our own thoughts and emotions. While, in the end, this has started to bring about positive change, it has been a journey of pain that we cannot allow ourselves to hide from and we cannot let the details of life push away the importance of centering racial justice.
Quickly, the end of summer is drawing closer and schools will start reopening in as little as three weeks in some states. So where are we as a collective group right now? We have been victimized by a system that told us in the past that we were horrible, didn't know how to do our job, not important enough to be given the resources necessary to do our jobs in the manner that we know we can, and that we need constant supervision as if we are children.
Now we are also being told that we are imagining the dangers of reopening schools, that we must restart the school year. Yet we know that one in four teachers are at a greater risk of serious illness if infected with Coronavirus. But not only are we being told to reopen schools, we are being told to do it by basically maintaining the status quo of a system that has had its own inequities laid bare for everyone to see.
"When someone expects to trust the judgment of an institution, but the institution then betrays justice, survivors are gaslighted."
We are survivors of abuse from a body of power that has sought to discredit public education and public education workers for the past two decades.
In examining the power structures we have been the ones historically with less power and decision making ability. We may have steady income and access to healthcare, placing us in better positions than many in our society but make no mistake about it, we are squarely placed in a position of oppression; and it's time we acknowledge that.
That acknowledgement needs to come sooner, rather than later because this lens of victimization and gaslighting can be applied to other workers and people across the country. We are not the only ones being forced back to work in unsafe conditions. We are not the only ones that are being told that we are imagining the dangers of the virus.
We are not the only ones that are researching how to write our wills and make sure we have an advanced directive in place.
We are not the only ones wondering if today might be the last day we see a friend or a loved one.
The economy relies upon schools to allow it to function. The only way to create substantive change is to halt a system in its tracks and force those that benefit from that system to feel the pain of its loss. This is our entry point for exposing more of the inequities of our society and forcing change.
Examining the intersection of this economical fight with our fight for racial justice we cannot ignore the fact that the decision to open schools at this point in time is nothing more than a racist decision. Black and Brown communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID. Schools in Black and Brown communities have been disproportionately underfunded and under resourced. Opening schools will increase this disproportionality and cause greater harm overall.
“This betrayal is uniquely poignant because it is often committed by a team of esteemed people who are framed as the arbiters of justice. In reality, that respected team is intended to protect its institution.”
Now is the moment in history where we need to recognize the fact that we have a responsibility to stand for what is right and declare that we will no longer be victims of oppression.
~ Melissa Tominson, Badass Teachers Association Executive Director