I wrote in "hell week" that I had some issues with my workplace accommodation not working out so well out of the gate. Here was my response...
I met with my boss to let her know how I had been affected by what I perceived as a violation of my workplace accommodation. I needed her to understand what a serious breach of trust this presented for me. I wrote everything down. There were three pages. I will not print them here. Although I may excerpt it here and there. I put a lot of thought into it. In general I laid out that I did not at all feel that she meant to do anything harmful. That there was no malicious intent and in general i felt very well supported. In fact, that was what made it all the more painful when our agreement wasn't met... Then I covered what it felt like in general when I THOUGHT things were going according to plan. And how my feelings changed; what the experience was like for me when I realized that our agreed-upon plan was not happening. (I did explain prior to our meeting that there would be crying. And I cried throughout.) Then I talked about the longer-lasting impact of the SNAFU... lack of trust, feeling of betrayal, feeling unsafe at work, not knowing if I could trust that our agreement would be honored in the future, wondering what I had done wrong, random crying jags. I made the distinction that I KNOW (in my head) that these are irrational, emotional overreactions, but that emotional overreactivity is part of the disability that led me to request the accommodation in the first place. To try and avoid situations like this. And that it will now take me some time to recover from this. Which I just wanted her to know. And I wanted to know if I needed to do anything to make this a more "real" workplace accommodation... one that would be treated with greater gravitas. Boss admitted that she'd screwed up and knew it at the time and felt terrible. That I was the first person that she had done workplace accommodations around this particular issue and there were several things that she hadn't thought through... including the vagaries of her own schedule that interfered with her commitment to our agreement. She did say that the accommodation I have is real and there is nothing additional I need to do to make it more solid. This was just a screw-up. A blip. A learning curve. I am writing this without crying. Which is AWESOME. She offered that if I ever felt I needed to I could talk to the superintendent. Which was not at all what I felt needed to be done. I just felt that I needed my boss to know from my end what things felt like. And I needed to hear from her that this would not happen again. That she and I would work together to find a better way to go forward in a manner that would not be so damaging. And I feel confident that we can work together on this. Also, one of my co-teachers offered to come into the meeting with me (or any meeting ever) should I feel the need for support. She is one of my favorite people. And another teacher (who I think I really freaked out by coming out of the principal's office with a tear-bleary face... ) expressed wishes that there was something he could do to make me feel better. Which made me feel better. Being open and honest and having a support system at work. This is working for me. This helps: having even a few people there who see and understand that I am not kidding when I say I need help... but that it doesn't make me a lesser teacher. And having people who encourage me to advocate for myself. And offer to serve as advocates for me. And are in general a group of kick-ass individuals. Grateful Crap: Done with this particular issue until the spring. Also, grateful for the whole painful process. Equatorial actions: meeting with boss writing up all the crap that I did meds: 200mg lamotrigine it has been an emotionally taxing few weeks. and now I have a show on Saturday to prep for (beading) glad I talked to the boss before returning from break because it helped ENORMOUSLY Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |