Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) Support Group
Find support with others who have gone through a traumatic experience. Whether you have chronic or acute PTSD, we are here for you.
For anyone who doesn't already know, I'm 61. Since 1980, I've either been a teacher or a hospital chaplain for 39 years now. After this school year 2019-2020 and then just one more year 2020-2021, I'm planning to retire to Mexico, where I grew up as a kid. At my community college I have tenure. I teach Spanish from my growing up as a missionary kid in Mexico half time, while from my hospital chaplaincy I went into from being raised a missionary kid I teach nursing students half time.
I've let my boss at my workplace know my 2021 retirement plans, even as I've worked hard to make sure she doesn't think I'm coasting lazily to the finish line. I still work hard at teaching, even with my PTSD diagnosis since 1995 and my kidney disease diagnosis since 2011 (I lost 60% kidney function and only have 40% kidney function left). Nonetheless, I don't just teach old lesson plans over and over. I always try to update my lesson plans every day with new Youtube videos and Powerpoints that appeal by computer in class to today's students.
However, this year my community college adopted a new "Learning Management System" called "Brightspace." It replaced "Blackboard," the "Learning Management System" we had for my 8 years with the college. Others go by names like "Canvass" or "Moodle," so if you haven't heard of either Blackboard nor Brightspace, perhaps you've heard of one of those.
For the past 8 years, using "Blackboard" was optional, whereas now using "Brightspace" is mandatory. I'm friends with one of the computer techs at my community college, so through him I've been trying to stay current. Today my boss came to me face to face to tell me, though, that I'm not keeping up with putting my Spanish and nursing class items up on "Brightspace." She's really frustrated with me. I've been giving handouts, syllabi, and exercises to my students directly in class face to face or via emails from me to them instead, like I've always done since I started teaching back before the Internet in 1980.
Giving my class materials out to my students face to face in class or via email is not acceptable this year. Course materials like handouts and so forth must now be supplied to students only via this new "Brightspace" web site. My boss just told me that if I give my student their course syllabus or a handout directly in class or via email, I'm "non-compliant" with "Brightspace." My boss told me that therefore I am not "compliant" with the new requirements for my job.
I feel really bad about being told I'm not compliant with doing my job. Since 1980 I've always done whatever it takes to be what I consider to be a good worker. Now I find out that the goalposts at work have been moved on me, so to speak, and here in the very next to last year of my career.
My boss told me today that she's going to have a meeting with me on Monday to set things straight. The meeting on Monday will be attended by her, by our community college's head of computer technology, our community college's deputy head of computer technology, and by the community college's technical support staffer who has been trying to help me this semester.
It seems to me that I'll outnumbered in this Monday meeting. My community college has no union that could represent me, either. Apparently, I'll be on my own. I found today's meeting one on one with my boss stressful. Monday's meeting looks like it will be four on one, so anticipating it is becoming even more stressful for me.
My "fight or flight" PTSD response to this conflict is "flight." I wish I could choose "flight" and retire now. However, I have to work at least until July of 2021 in order to complete the 10 years of service required to be "vested" in my state pension plan. So July of 2021 is the earliest retirement date possible for me.
How do I manage my PTSD with this stress today and stress upcoming Monday? Suggestions and support welcome.
The odd thing is that I've gotten zero response, not to the letter, nor has the meeting with the 4 of them materialized. Here it is midterm now (we have Monday and Tuesday off next week for midterm break) and it seems my boss may have just quietly dropped the issue. My letter wasn't meant to head things off, it was meant to engage as positively as I could with learning what to improve about my use of our new technology.
Do you think it headed things off instead somehow?
P.S.--Today a great student I had last semester drove an hour and a half to see me in my office face to face from the university to which she's transferred. She came seeking advice on study abroad in Spanish. It was really validating to me as a teacher working to catch up on new technology to have this great student face to face seeking my advice like that.
I found it absolutely useless. It cuts down human interaction in person. I forgot to check it. It actually made me feel more disorganized. I always preferred it when teachers handed things out in person. I can't read something like a textbook on a screen. I barely make it through a news article on a computer. So things posted on there just ended up being skimmed by me instead of read in-depth. But on paper or a physical book, I can read the whole thing.
We rely WAY too much on our technology. And as a substitute teacher, there isn't a day where I am not telling at least 10 kids to put their god damned cell phone away. I leave out the god damned part though.
Good luck with the meeting. Your boss sounds like the one with the problem.
It's supposed to be a big improvement over Blackboard, but I find the improvements to be mostly cosmetic. Blackboard was useful to me in only 3 ways: to make announcements to classes, to give tests to be automatically graded (which I loved), and to distribute my syllabus and handouts to classes.
Other than that, it works better when, as you say, I hand things out in person. It seems to me you're right--we've reached an extreme in our reliance on technology.
I'm hearing people beginning to say they're cutting back on social media in their personal lives. I'm thinking in the next few years the pendulum will swing back in professional life, too, with a renewed emphasis on the face to face person to person touch. Of course, by then I'll be retired, knock on wood.
Thanks for validating how I feel about this, it means a ton that you do so from here at DS PTSD and from working as a teacher, too. I think my boss does have a problem. I'm beginning to suspect my community college top tier bosses put too much money into this D2L or Brightspace switchover. They're pressuring lower level bosses like her to make sure their investment is put to use as widely as possible, whether that comes naturally or not.
So far, no news is good news as far as this meeting goes, I get a weekend off without having had it. As they say, I'm going to look into the approach to "let go and let God" for a couple of days,