When I was completing my student teaching experience 30 years ago, I thought it was my good fortune that my sophomore English teacher, whose teaching style and personality made students feel safe and confident, had agreed to mentor me for the semester. I knew she would guide, correct, and model behavior in her classroom for me in such a way that I would leave with far more than just the required hours needed to check off this box of program requirements. I had no idea that her teaching neighbor, my eleventh grade English teacher, would tag team this endeavor and also keep me tucked under her wing. The result of having these two kind souls watching out for me and committing so much of their time to making sure I could go confidently into my own classroom the next school year was—and I say this without a trace of hyperbole—life changing. The foundation they helped build is what has allowed me to spend the majority of my life loving a career that is notorious for devouring optimistic educators and spitting them out a short while later when they’re no longer capable of giving themselves away with little to no return on their investment. It’s also what helped sustain me when I began teaching and encountered the first “mean girl” of my professional life.
The school where I began my career assigned each new teacher a “mentor” for the year, someone who (I later learned) had been “voluntold” by administrators to accept this task. My mentor was only several years from retirement and had the presence of an old-school teacher with her impeccably-styled hair, perpetually-fresh lipstick, and two-inch pumps that I’ll bet she never kicked off under her desk while grading papers during her planning period. She allowed me the same tight smile that she gave students only after Christmas because every teacher knew that if you smiled before Christmas, the students would sniff out weakness and run all over you! This teacher provided the needed instructions for me on where to request hall passes, which principal dealt with which grade level, and when the book room would be open to issue texts. It was clear that once these initial duties were completed, she really did have other things she needed and preferred to do than be my cardigan-wearing Yoda for nine months. I didn’t fault her for that. But when I began hearing snippets of conversations from the teacher lounge that she and several other teachers had about my classroom management style or grading methods, I was stunned that they’d not brought their comments to me. When it escalated to my “mentor” meeting with the principal about her concerns and my hearing about it from other teachers, I had no idea how to respond. After giving my heart rate time to slow and my brain a few days to process the information, I knocked on her classroom door after school to ask if there were any particular aspects of my teaching practice she felt needed more of my attention. She granted me a Mona Lisa smile, shook her head, and told me she could think of nothing offhand to recommend. Several days later, though, I received a “See Me” note from the principal and was told during my brief meeting with him that “some” teachers in my department were “concerned” about my ability to lead a class and that he would be conducting drop-in observations for the remaining six months of the school year. I never returned to the classroom of my assigned mentor teacher and, while I maintained a professional courtesy with her, I never exchanged anything more than a head nod and “good morning” as we passed in the hallway. I do, however, credit her for the lessons she taught me about how to identify, respond to, and survive as an adult what we now call “mean girls.”
I’m not a betting person usually but in this case I’ll make an exception and say that my money’s on nearly everyone having had a similar experience at some point in their lives, whether their “mean girl” was male or female, old or young, a professional or personal contact. And even after an entire life of observing or experiencing such people in action, I still battle the initial reaction to self-assess for what role I played in causing them to behave in this way when our paths crossed. And I still devote far too much of my time to wondering what life circumstances led to someone becoming toxic and abusive, and why we continue to tacitly condone the behavior by assigning it the seemingly-innocuous “mean girl” label instead of calling it what it is. I don’t have any answers for these burdensome questions. Instead, I have a collection of behaviors that I believe are common among these individuals, although the reasons they possess them are varied, I’m sure.
Toxic individuals are in our families, our classes, our workplaces, our churches, our neighborhoods, and our governments. They thrive in self-generated conflict. They will assign characteristics to others that help advance whatever narrative best serves them, regardless of if those characteristics bear any resemblance to their target; they are not interested in learning the truth of who someone is because it doesn’t serve their purpose. That purpose, very often, is to place themselves in the victim role and lament how “everyone” is out to get them, often one person in particular.
When one is initially targeted by a toxic individual, a natural response is to seek conflict resolution, to get to the bottom of the issue. It quickly becomes apparent, though, that reconciliation and growth are of no interest to the “injured” party because they would then cease to be the martyr. The silent treatment typically follows, if not an explosive confrontation in which their version of events is largely fiction. Other times, a toxic person will launch a much more subtle campaign to erode someone’s confidence, reputation, or sanity. Their offhand comments, tones, or facial expressions can be just as destructive as a libelous billboard in the town square.
Anyone who has tangled with this kind of person knows it. The damage it causes might never be repaired, but at the very least it takes time and work to recover from. The jury is out, if you believe the scholarly as well as the not-so-scholarly articles written on whether someone with a personality as malignant as Chernobyl can or will ever change. We’ll never have the power to make them, nor should we. But the silver lining of these experiences is that is intensifies our gratitude for those people in our lives who show up because they love us; they assume the best of us; they come to us to seek resolution and growth in times of conflict; and they are as proud of our success as they are their own. It’s having these people in our corner that enables us to endure the slings and arrows of people whose battles lie not with us, but within themselves.
PartWolf 