At this present moment, at the age of fifty-eight, I find myself on stress leave yet NOT on Stress Leave.
It sounds silly I know however half-way through Term 4 last year, after what seems a lifetime of teaching at a hard to staff school in a low socio-economic area. I was standing in front of a class of almost teenagers when it all became just a little too much. One could say that I just dropped my bundle and crawled on home.
I've always known that I worked in a tough school and I saw many a teacher leave our hallowed halls after a year or two (sometimes even just a day or two) but I knew that I would never leave because I usually don't lose my cool in the really stressful situations.
I am a touch old broad who can handle being called some not very nice names, and hey, the extra body weight is handy if one has to throw oneself amongst it when a fight brakes out. And I am sorry to say that the confiscation of a knife, screwdriver or sharpened object has become just another thing that happens either in the playground or the classroom.
So taking it all into consideration it really is hard for me to accept that six young people constantly at me in the classroom was the proverbial straw that broke this camel's back. Just like the dripping tap as in what we in our childhood called Chinese water torture.
I was being bullied in my own classroom.
It is hard to continually have to listen to, "I'm not doing that", "Why do we have to do this?", "Who's gonna make me?", "I can use my Ipod (mobile phone, camera) whenever I want to, you can't stop me", "my Mum's gonna come in here and bash you one if you don't watch out", "you keep looking at me like that I'll smash your f-----g face in" all of these and more were being constantly yelled at me in any one period. What to do?
Go on stress leave which isn't yet Stress Leave.
It seams to me that the government makes teachers go through a myriad of obstacles - ironically causing more stress - in order to verify a claim.
Try the stress of jumping through flaming hoops (weekly GP visits), running over a bed of glowing coals (weekly psychologist visits), weaving in and out between very large bandsaws (a three hour investigative appointment) or being chased by a large rolling boulder (a three hour psychiatric appointment) AND all this can take three months (using up sick leave, annual leave, long service leave and any other leave entitlements).
Then it is another three to four weeks before the department contacts one to say, "hello Ms
-----, your application for sick leave has been accepted." A SLIGHT PAUSE AS YOU PICK YOURSELF UP OFF THE FLOOR... and straight away into, "when shall we begin to look at the process of placing you back into the classroom?"
Apparently there is no recovery time, you had your stress leave whilst you were attempting to outrun all of the obstacles detailed above.
As one colleague stated, "so they f-----g stress you out as you, just to make sure that you are on
f-----g Stress Leave."
That pretty much says it all really...
I wrote the above article in one of the days that I didn't have an appointment, but I thought I probably should have had one. Sounds strange but in writing this I found that I got a clearer picture of what is going on in my head. Between this article and the narrative of my life and times at KSHS/GC I'm beginning to think that the writing is helping. Perhaps in the future I'll not go to as many appointments as I have in the past.
