Before I describe how a Bad Apple Bully administrator prepares to attack a teacher, I want to make it clear that working as a teacher in Queensland is not all bad. The opportunities to live in interesting and remote parts of the state are amazing. If you are the sort of person who has ever thought of spending a few years working in a developing country, Queensland can offer you a similar sort of experience with a good salary, an excellent superannuation scheme and (some) better working and living conditions.
And not all Education Queensland administrators are Bad Apples. Most administrators are ordinary people with the usual range of personality quirks and intellectual capacity. The average Education Queensland School principal is not, by nature, a bully. But these basically decent administrators can be manipulated by a Bad Apple. They can be groomed into a mob.
"Mobbing" develops when a group of administrators secretly gossip about a teacher and beat up a "concern" about their target's work that is based almost entirely on their own gossip rather than on the facts. http://www.workplacemobbing.com/ Historical link preserved from the original page.
The mob is usually recruited, groomed and manipulated by a Bad Apple. The mob are being "groomed" to support and protect the Bad Apple.
Eventually some members of the mob may realise that they are being manipulated. But they may feel trapped in the situation and responsible for their own contribution to the gossip/ exageration/ beat-up of the facts. They may feel obliged to lie in order to protect the other members of the mob. They may be afraid that the mob will turn on them if they "break ranks". http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/mobbing.htm
But the Bad Apple Bully Mob-Boss never realises that he/she is a bully. The Bad Apple is so used to hinting and suggesting, to beating up the facts, to manipulating, to bluffing and exagerating, to quick changes of the story, to impulsive and irrational decision-making, etc. that it has become the usual way that they relate to other people. Bad Apple Bullies do not understand their own behaviour.
How Does a Bad Apple Bully Administrator Prepare to Attack a Teacher?
Very, very secretly, long before you have any idea that there is a problem, the Bad Apple administrator will have been preparing to attack you.
He/she will have carefully pre-"groomed" other administrators. Lots of time will have been secretly spent on the phone or huddled in offices, gossiping about you. The Bad Apple will move secretly from administrator to administrator, squeezing out negative remarks about you, nurturing them and carrying them carefully from person to person, skillfully beating up any little problem to create a general tide of serious "concern".
He/she will also have secretly been collecting "evidence".
He/she will have been spending a lot of time talking to children about you. Comments such as, "Sometimes... gets annoyed with Ms... because she says things and then forgets. " will be carefully scribbled onto loose scraps of paper and filed away. These loose scraps of paper will be undated and unsigned. The notes will be written in pencil so that the "allegations" can be continually changed. The "allegations" may not even be true. The Bad Apple may be perfectly aware that they are not true. But you will have no opportunity to find out the facts and to respond. The Bad Apple will not discuss his/her notes notes with you. You will have no idea that this is all going on.
Parents will be encouraged to make written complaints about you.
Small misunderstandings between teachers will be carefully "spun" to make it appear that you are the "problem". For example, if you ask a teacher to stop their class from roaming about the school and continually disturbing your lessons, a Bad Apple administrator will record this situation as evidence of you having upset the other teacher with your "inflexible attitude".
Head Office staff will be consulted. If you take sick leave because of the stress caused by the Bad Apple's harassment, it may trigger a pre-emptive strike. The Bad Apple may ring Education Queensland Head Office in Brisbane and discuss putting you on DWP. This is a strategy to prevent you from claiming Workcover. The Bad Apple does not want a Workcover claim made about their harassment. The Bad Apple will try to secretly start the process of putting you on DWP before you become ill from the stress of the harassment. So that, when your health is destroyed by the harassment, you will also be refused Workcover.
The Bad Apple will confidently tell the Education Queensland administrator in the Brisbane Office that she has very grave concerns about your work. And so has her Deputy Principal. The Bad Apple will describe the Deputy Principal's concerns in detail.
This is the clever way that Bad Apples secretly groom other administrators, sucking them into the mob by putting a clever "spin" on the facts. The Bad Apple will not tell the Head Office administrator that neither she nor the Deputy Principal have ever seen you teach or looked at your program. She will not explain that the Acting Deputy Principal has only been acting as Deputy Principal for four days and that she/he was carefully selected by the Bad Apple because she/he was so inexperienced and easy to manipulate.
Times of management change are times when workplace bullying tends to flourish.
You will have no idea that any of this is going on. You will only be aware that you are continually having to deal with unpleasant misunderstandings. You may notice that the Bad Apple administrator seems to be very impulsive. You may realise that the Bad Apple is a brazen liar. You feel unsafe. You begin to become ill from the stress of the situation.
An opportunity will arise for a direct attack on you: Perhaps you suggest a different way of doing something.
The Bad Apple Bully will react impulsively, wildly, irrationally to this less-than-total obedience to their will. This is the opportunity that they have been preparing for!
The Bad Apple Bully administrator launches a pre-emptive strike. He/She declares that the problem is not the problem. The problem is you talking about the problem. You must be put on Diminished Workplace Performance!
This is, of course, against the Education Queensland Code of Conduct and and a total abuse of the DWP. But the Bad Apple Bully knows that Bad Apple Bully administrators don't really have to follow Education Queensland Policies.
The Bad Apple knows that they will never be held accountable for their behaviour. That is the "process".
Then it is "all on", and terribly exciting! District office staff will be asked for their "advice" on the situation. This is a strategy to ensure that, if you make a grievance, the District Office Staff will already have been pre-groomed to support the Bad Apple. The Bad Apple Bully becomes the centre of attention at the District Office! Every other administrator is involved in advising them and supporting them in their attack on you!
The Bad Apple Bully feels that they are really acting like a principal now.
Meetings with Bad Apple administrators put you at huge risk. It is important to realise that a Bad Apple's purpose in meeting with you is to generate falsified meeting notes. Then you can be punished because of what "happened" at the meeting. An Education Queensland investigator will consider these falsified meeting notes to represent "the truth". It is important to realise that there is no truth any more. The "truth" is what is written in the Bad Apple's meeting notes, even if it did not happen.
It is important to realise that any other administrator present at a meeting organised by a Bad Apple will also have to falsify their meeting notes. Yes, even that nice smiley administrator you have always respected so much. They will "not remember" anything favourable to you. Your responses to the "allegations" will be edited out of the notes. Names will be changed so that any written response you make to the verbal "allegations" is nonsense. If you complain about being continually threatened by the Bad Apple Bully, the notes will record that you felt threatened by the process. All positive comments about your work will be edited out of the meeting notes.
You will not be shown a copy of these falsified meeting notes. They will be secretly placed on your file. You will only realise what has been going on when you apply for your documents under FOI.
When you are first directly attacked you may be bewildered. The Bad Apple's behaviour seems to be so obviously irrational that you think it is just another of those annoying "misunderstandings". You think that, if you explain, people will realise that it is a fuss over nothing. So you explain. You explain over and over again. You watch people going cross-eyed with your endless explanations.
Slowly, slowly, it dawns on you that nobody cares. The truth is irrelevant. Your career is over. The many years that you spent studying at university, the long years of part-time study, the loans that you have taken on to pay for your university course, your car and your computer, the remote areas you have endured- all have been wasted. You are going to be mentally, physically, professionally and financially destroyed. Education Queensland administrators are all going to do the quickest and easiest thing -and pretend to believe the Bad Apple. That's "the process".
Eventually, if you are lucky, you discover Tim Field's website Bully OnLine http://www.bullyonline.org/workbully/index.htm and you realise that what is happening to you is happening to teachers all over the world. You realise that what is happening to you is workplace bullying.