a full circle moment - part two

what now?

No one around me, except my husband, really knew how bad things got towards the end. So many nights I’d come home and break down in tears. Their narcissistic tactics worked, I guess, the guilt was well and truly piling up.

You see over the years we’d built something that felt like family. Like a handful of other staff members, I had poured myself into the growth of those students, academically, socially and emotionally. Many enrolled at the College brought baggage from mostly disadvantaged schools across Sydney. And because we were often under staffed, this meant we weren’t just classroom teachers, we often slipped into the role of counsellor, friend, life coach, even mother-figures. And if you happened to be a teacher that shared the faith and culture of the school, the expectation to go above and beyond was doubled. We were treated like volunteers, assumed to take on extra responsibilities and activities (religious lessons, weekend programs, public holiday events) all the time.

There were no boundaries.

Back then, lines were certainly blurred. And to be honest, maybe we were partly to blame for that because we let it slide for too long, well I know I did. We could see how much of the community needed the school to do well and so we were driven by that eagerness to see the school’s success.

With all that pressure and expectation I was already drowning in guilt without the need for the College Board to toss me another anchor. I was naturally torn. It felt like resigning meant betraying many, especially with our first cohort moving so close to their HSC year.

In hindsight, I know now how crucial it is as a teacher to set boundaries early.

And in an ideal world I’d have stayed for years. I know it. I was achieving so much as a teacher and a leader and I was good at it.

But that wasn’t the world I was in.

Despite the guilt lingering, every morning I’d still get up like a well-oiled machine. Get ready. Pull myself together. Plaster on a smile. And slip into my professional skin as I drove up that dusty driveway.

Deep breath in.
Deep breath out.

No one could know. I didn’t want anyone to know. And so I kept going, quietly breaking.

There were moments when I probably came across as a bit too reserved or rigid, but risking emotion wasn’t an option. I was a young principal in my early 30s. Muslim. Arab. Woman. In hijab. The moment I let my guard down, it would've been used against me. Not that I had to try very hard because there was the chairman always ready to tear me down anyway.

Take the tree-planting day we’d organised for National Tree Day. The council offered to donate tree saplings and tools to plant in the school garden. The school took up the offer to plant these in an accessible spot students could tend to on a regular. But the chairman, putting his own wish list of trees ahead of the council’s, pushed me to renegotiate.

He wanted a long list of non-native species, then threatened to cancel if his demands weren’t met. I knew the council’s rule: only Aussie natives I was told again when I made another call. I didn’t want to make that call. I felt embarrassed and uncomfortable. We were getting hundreds of dollars’ worth of trees I thought. Who were we to complain or come off as ungrateful?

When council members turned up the morning of, ready to plant, the chairman had changed planting details we had agreed upon. Instead of planting in a front garden bed, he took us to a barren patch at the back of the school property. It was a part of the school with rock-hard clay ground, barely reachable and an out of bounds area. The day was chaos. The students struggled to dig holes. In the end they plopped saplings into cracks as best they could while the chairman looked on with a smirk of pettiness.

Under the scorching sun, in infertile soil and without water, unsurprisingly, most trees wilted within weeks.

Nobody knew about the last minute change of plans and the demands made by the chairman. So on the outside, as usual, it came across as a blunder on my part. He did this to me often. He’d undermine. In turn I looked inexperienced and incompetent. He’d blame-shift and gaslight. I’d always be left questioning my ability, my memory, my sanity.

On its own this event sounds minor. But piled on top of every other instance of undermining and petty sabotage, it made work unbearable.

After that fiasco, I vowed to speak up. So when he casually told me to compile a list of teachers who could do without pay that week (because apparently the school had run out of money) I said, “No, absolutely not. You can’t assume anyone’s financial situation. No one here works for free.”

He was stunned by my bluntness. But I was even more thrown off and honestly had no idea what to make of such a request. Most people around him always responded with “yes, sir.” But that was not going to be me.

It got to a point where I put this on the agenda of a board meeting. During this meeting him, his wife and a couple of others were present and I was upfront about his constant meddling and undermining of my role. They agreed on paper that this needed to change. Nothing changed. Instead the wife stepped into his power-hungry shoes, smiling her way through the same greed and control but did so with such alluring manipulative flattery.

I once mentioned this and more to a therapist. She listened, then said, “That sounds like a traumatic experience.” I froze. Traumatic?

I’d never thought of it that way. To me, it was just work. Stuff you deal with and move on from.

Turns out it wasn’t just stuff. It was pain I carried deep in my chest, long after I’d left.

By the start of 2013, my daughters (now aged 11, 8 and 6) were getting ready for a new school year. I felt relief I wasn’t going back, but that quickly turned into dread.

What now? Who was I without a job, that daily routine?

On paper I could have easily stepped into another school. I had experience, qualifications and all. But the thought of being in a classroom twisted my stomach like a knot I couldn’t undo.

For the first time in my adult life, I felt I had nothing to fill my days. Driving the kids to and from school and ticking off household chores wasn’t enough. I needed something to calm my rattled mind.

It took me some time to admit I hadn’t just left a job. Something inside me had broken, and I didn’t yet know how to fix it.

All I knew was the idea of walking back into any school environment made me feel physically ill.

To be continued…