We hear a lot about and discuss bullying as it affects our students (as well we should). But what about the bullying of teachers? Image credits: SeanRogers1
I was recently reading a very interesting article from the April edition of Australia's Teacher Magazine, in which the issue of workplace bullying for teachers is tackled. It presents some quite disturbing statistics about the amount of bullying that teachers receive in countries like Australia, the UK, and Ireland, but also explores some very helpful information related to actually defining "bullying" in teacher workplaces, differentiating it from behaviour which shouldn't be categorised as bullying (but may be in an attempt to apply bullying accusations), and - of utmost importance - what we can realistically do about it.
As tough as mainstream teachers in public school settings in Western countries may find bullying, my personal impression is that people involved in ELT/TEFL cop it far worse. When you are overseas, subject to different laws (and even different cultural definitions as to what comprises "bullying" and what doesn't), in easily-compromised visa situations and with a far less reliable (or significant) sources of income, the bullying dilemma can raise its ugly snout far more often and lay its bite far more severely.
I don't see the issue of bullying of TEFLers raised much at all, which is really tragic - considering how often and how severely it occurs.
So this blog post is an attempt to reach out and talk about the issue. Here are some starting points:
- What IS and what ISN'T reasonably defined as bullying in the TEFL workplace?
- Given the greater or lesser (usually greater) tolerance for bullying in many of the cultures/contexts where people work as TEFLers, should our intepretation of and reaction to it be flexible?
- As a TEFLer, have you experienced bullying yourself, or seen it happen in your workplace? How did you react to it?
- Have you ever been accused of bullying behaviour, and do you think it was a fair claim?
- Is there anything effective we can do to try and reduce the amount of teacher bullying that goes on in TEFL, and also more adequately support victims of bullying?
I'm very interested to hear your comments on what I think is a very important issue in our profession. Please feel free to comment anonymously (you will need to include an email address when posting, but this will NOT be displayed publicly anywhere on this blog or anywhere else!) if you feel uncomfortable about discussing the issue on a public blog.
(I usually sign off with a little grin, but I won't in this case for - I hope - obvious reasons).
