Teachers' Perspectives on Principal Mistreatment

At faculty meetings, he believes only one voice should be heard, his. He thinks that he is a people person because he can make almost seventy people sit there and face him . . . no one else speaksóhe just keeps talking . . . one or two people . . . will ask questions, and he is brutal with them. Heíll say, ìI am not going to talk with you about that now.Î If you ask a question and he doesnít want to deal with it, he just cuts you off. One time, I asked a question at a meeting. He said, ìI donít appreciate being questioned and, if you have anything to say during a faculty meeting, donít!Î One timeÖhe went through almost a 100 pages of ìYou donít do this . . . donít you everÖI mean it!Î . . . Faculty meetings usually go on for over an hour and nobody else speaks.

You donít ask the principal anything, because he is just going to yell. If he knows the answer, he is not going to tell you. Faculty meetings were crazy; they didnít accomplish anything. He would read a typed written agenda to us; it was just a joke. If you said something and he didnít agree with it, then he would respond, ìDid you understand what I said? Well, we are going to do it this way, because I am the principal.Î We just sat there and wrote notes like, ìCan you believe we are sitting here?Î

Teachers also described overtly authoritarian-abusive principalsí approach to faculty committees.

Committee members were appointed by her based on whom she liked and whom she didnít like: favoritism. She ran some of the committees. She just told you what to do; she didnít participate. We knew that you couldnít do anything to the contrary of what she would want, so the meetings went something like, ìWhat do you think she wants us to do? Okay, letís do that.Î She had her spies. There was no way to discuss anything. There was no professional discussion. Everything was an order, and you just followed it and hoped to dodge criticism.

As mentioned earlier, all abusive principals used thinly-veiled manipulative techniques to control teachers, such as negative comments (ìWe have done that before, it wonít workÎ) and pejorative labeling (ìYou are just a ënegativeí personÎ), vetoing faculty decisions, inviting dissenting faculty to ìprivateÎ meetings, limiting time, and limiting agendas to particular topics to control faculty. However, as suggested above, covertly authoritarian-abusive principals attempted to maintain a veneer of shared decision making:

She decided to have this big ìdemocraticÎ procedure but decisions were predetermined, you know. We were supposed to come to a consensus, but everybody was afraid to voice their opinions. The principal would call a meeting, and sometimes it would start at 2:45 and not be over until 5:30 or 6:00. There was never any warning that we were going to have a meeting, or how long it might last. She would stand up in front of the whole cafeteria full of people and read ìherÎ agenda. You would be quiet and then you would leave. When the accreditation team came, I signed up to be on the communication committee. Lo and behold, guess who was chairman of that committee? The principal. She came to the meeting and said, ìThis isnít going to be long at all. It is going to be a piece of cake. I jotted a few things down on this paper. If you would like to proofread and see if there is anything that you want to change or add, we will be out of here in 10 minutes.Î What person was going to fight her? So, we all read it nodded our heads, signed off, and left.