By Fran Martin

When my son was two I was still working at the school that I am back at today. I thought that what I wanted at the time was to stay home with my son, still having the postpartum depression so I thought if I left where I am teaching in Waterbury that I could get a job in Danbury, Connecticut at a middle school. I knew deep in my heart that staying home wouldn’t be an option because I had to contribute too to the bills. Being a stay at home parent in today’s world is really rough, unless your husband makes a huge salary and you can afford to stay home, its just not doable. We would struggle if I stayed home. So, I left my current job in 2017 after being there from 2008. I thought that the move would be a good thing for me and for my family and being closer to home instead of commuting to Waterbury everyday would be good. I couldn’t be more wrong. You know how they say that the grass isn’t always greener. Well it definitely wasn’t greener, it was brown and burnt. Little did I know that I should have never left my teaching job in Waterbury. This started a seven year torturous journey for me ahead.

I landed a special education teaching job in Danbury at a middle school for the upcoming 2017-2018 school year. I was all excited and I went out and bought so much stuff to decorate my classroom so nicely, I spent a ton of money just so it could look nice for my students. I felt proud and excited. I was a self-contained special education teacher to students who were labeled as being emotionally disturbed. My first week I realized what a huge mistake I had made. My supervisor was a micromanager and she wanted to know everything that I was doing. Now, knowing everything that you are doing in the classroom is not a bad thing, but the way in which she did it was undeniably torturous for me. She made me doubt myself as a teacher and made me feel really insecure about myself. She would show up out of nowhere every time and questioned my every move, she wanted to see everything that I was doing. I had been doing this exact job for seven years prior in a really challenging environment, I knew what I was doing, and I was really good at it, but she managed to make me doubt that about myself. When I would try to correct something to improve what it was that she wanted me to fix it was never good enough for her. I became quickly frustrated with the situation entirely. I would come home very stressed, angry and crying all of the time and I had a husband who had a very difficult job himself and a baby at home to take care of. I kicked myself and couldn’t believe that I left Waterbury to come to this. I hated the place like with a complete passion and I grew hate in my heart for my supervisor. I couldn’t stand to look at her she made me sick to my stomach. I would cringe when I knew that she was coming into my room to watch me because I knew what it meant, interrogation and questions upon questions and wanting to see every document, it was stressful. She wasn’t helping me at all she was torturing me. I can remember going to a PPT and she wrote on a note next to her friend that stated, “Look at Plachcinski she is sleeping lol.” I chose to look down during the meeting because I didn’t want to make eye contact with her. I only looked up when it was my turn to speak. The only reason I know that she wrote that note is because when the meeting was over I went back into the meeting room and dug it out of the garbage. On a little pink piece of paper in small handwriting sure enough was her note. I saw that she wrote this note during the meeting and was looking directly at me while writing this note. I wrote on a sticky and copied the note and left it on her friends desk and I wrote on the sticky, “You can tell your friend (my supervisor) that I wasn’t sleeping.” They were making fun of me, nice right. And you call yourselves professionals. That was when I knew in that moment that she was jealous of me. In fact, I was doing a great job I realized in that moment. She didn’t like the fact that I would challenge her on her questions every time she would come and see me. She didn’t like to be questioned and I stood up for myself and she didn’t like that too. She also had two spy’s working for her and they were two female paras that I had in my room. They would run and tell her everything that was going on in my classroom. I had one male para and he was awesome he was the one who got me through the rest of the school year. Without his support and humor I wouldn’t of lasted. At the end of the school year we both decided in a meeting that it was a mutual feeling that this place was not a good fit for me. I told them that I wasn’t going to come back. After that I wrote a long letter to the Superintendent of Danbury Public Schools explaining my experience there during that year and it felt good to get all my feelings down on paper. I instantly felt a release. I never mailed it to him though I guess I didn’t want to keep that part of my life alive still and I knew that when he got it that there would be a big meeting and I would have to see her again and I wasn’t willing to do that to myself. I had had enough. I still have the letter, maybe one day I will mail it, maybe one day. That chapter of my life came to an end.

In 2018-2019 I then went to back to Waterbury seeing if I could get my old job back and I specifically told them in the interview that I wanted to be placed back at my old school, but once the interview was over they sent me to a magnet elementary school into a classroom full of students who were severely handicapped. Some were wheelchair bound, non-verbal, and very behavioral. This is not what I signed up for and they placed me there because it was a high need place that needed a special education teacher and so I had to go. I remember my first day there I all of the sudden got violently ill and had to go to the nurse’s station to lie down for a while because I just didn’t feel good. After about an hour of laying there and not getting any better I went to the office and asked to go home because I couldn’t function. They let me leave and told me to feel better. I remember getting in my car and not even making it out of the parking lot, I threw up violently out the drivers side door. I was like what is going on. I had to pull off the highway too to throw up one more time. I knew I wasn’t pregnant and I didn’t think I had the flew. Suddenly driving home it hit me that my body was reacting to having to work there when I didn’t want to, my body was telling me this is not the place for you in my sickness. I still needed a job. I didn’t know what to do, I was getting scratched everyday pretty badly by students who couldn’t talk and I was trying to help them I really was. I even had to change diapers just to help out the overwhelmed paras. My co-teacher and I got along at first we would share things to do with the kids she would show me things and how everything worked. When I started to branch off and just stay in my room and do my own routine with my students she didn’t like it, she needed me to want her and to ask her questions and go to her for stuff and to run things by her, but I was already a special education teacher and I knew what to do I didn’t need her help. I had two paras plus myself in the classroom I was good. She would go to the principal and report things that she didn’t like about me and it was just bad. I didn’t realize she was doing this until the principal called me into her office one day to ask why I wasn’t working with this person and I explained how I was grateful for everything she taught me and helped me with but that I was good and could do it on my own thank you from here on out. She got wind of that conversation and she really didn’t care for me after that. I didn’t stay very long I left in December.

My next experience was substitute teaching in the Brewster Central School District from 2018-2019. I would go there everyday for a year get my daily assignment and sub in all of the classrooms K-12 throughout the district. I liked it for a short while. During this time I was going to Blue Sky Behavioral Health Clinic as an outpatient person. I was no longer going to groups just going to therapy twice a week. I needed a job where that would allow for me to continue at Blue Sky’s. I met a lot of great people there. One of the principals at the elementary school was really nice to me and we hit it off really well. When she had looked at my resume she asked me into her office and asked me if I would like to have a full time job there and I told her that I needed the night to think about it and I would get back to her. I immediately called my therapist and asked him what he thought that I should do and he said, “well you have to look at everything that they are asking you to do and you also have to think of your therapy time and how you are feeling right now. Is this something you feel you can handle at this time.” I was still going through a lot with the postpartum and still wasn’t feeling the greatest. Although I really wanted the job, I thought that I just couldn’t handle it at the time. I was still doubting my teaching abilities from how my previous supervisor in Danbury treated me and I thought that I wasn’t good enough still. She really did a number on my self-esteem. So the next day I told the principal that I was touched by her offer but I would have to decline the offer. She retired that year too. I also didn’t have my teaching license in the state of New York and I was working on getting it but the state of New York is a really difficult state to get your teaching license a reciprocity from Connecticut to New York, it is a lengthy process. I am still trying to get my license to this day I just have to take a few courses and then I can get it. I was bummed about it. I kept subbing but didn’t feel fulfilled with the job. I would see all these teachers teaching everyday with a purpose and I didn’t have one. I didn’t have a purpose and that is the loneliest feeling one could ever have. I stayed there until part of 2018.

I remember going on a lot of interviews and getting really good at it. I knew all the right terms to say and I knew many examples to give. I felt good during interviews. I remember going on this one interview for a middle school in Newtown, Connecticut and I nailed it. The supervisor called me right afterwards and offered me the position. When I told her and was honest with her about going to Blue Sky Behavioral Health for postpartum depression that I couldn’t miss my therapy appointments she suddenly said that the position wasn’t a good fit for me. People say that they care about mental health issues and want to do something to help others who are struggling with mental health but, they really don’t care at all and don’t want to know about it at all. I guess I was really going on these interviews to prove something to myself, that I was enough and I was good enough for the job. I learned a lot in such a short period of time.

My next job was in 2019-2020 at Norwalk Public Schools in Connecticut. I was split in between two schools and elementary school and a middle school as a special education teacher. I really like it at first and got along with all of the staff and my work teams really well. I made a few friends and just felt good inside. I was doing a good job and people noticed and I got complimented for it and that made me feel good like I was making a difference once again. I thought maybe this is the place that is going to be good for me. Then Covid-19 hit like a ton of bricks. I remember like it was yesterday, March 13th a Friday of 2020. I remember the kids getting out on a half day schedule out of nowhere it was an emergency dismissal because all of the surrounding states were shutting the schools down. I remember all of the teachers saying good-bye to the kids not knowing that we wouldn’t see them in person for the rest of the school year. Little did we know that e- learning would be through a computer and we would all be quarantined for the rest of the school year. I had a bad feeling in my body that day not only because of covid-19 and we didn’t know what it really meant and how to handle all of it but, I knew that working from home was going to be bad for me. I do better getting up and physically going to a place to work. So, I started what everybody else started and that was teaching online which was very strange. My son wasn’t in school yet at the time so I had to watch him too while working. I struggled big time. I had two supervisors one was really cool and we got along very well she was the supervisor for middle school and the other was my supervisor for the elementary and she was cool at first until she wasn’t. I was struggling big time with working from home and she could see it on me when we would have meetings. Did she reach out to me and ask me how she could help me not once did she do that. The other supervisor did all the time. One day during a zoom meeting my son wanted to see what it was that I was doing on the computer and he ran head first into the doorway wall not looking and he split his head wide open, blood everywhere. I told the student that I was working with that I had to go to the hospital right away that my son had gotten injured really badly but I would zoom with her when I got back. The mother was in the background and agreed. So I went to the hospital and got him stitches and we went back home and I zoomed with her again. The next day the mother calls my supervisor the one that turned on me and reported the whole story of what happened the day before with my son and that she didn’t appreciate that and that her daughter needed her special education time and it shouldn’t be interrupted. Well, a meeting was then had with my supervisor the principal of the school and my supervisor’s supervisor. I told them everything that happened and they questioned why I wouldn’t reach out to my supervisor if I was struggling. I thought to myself you could clearly see in the zooms that I was struggling so why do I have to be the one to reach out and get help from them, they are the bosses they should check on their staff and make sure that they are okay. I even got Covid-19 during this time too and my nice supervisor reached out to me everyday and the other one nothing. Nothing. Again, during a pandemic everybody is all for “mental health” but they really aren’t they are about the bottom line and the bottom line is that the job needs to get done no matter what. They even said to me in this meeting, “enough with the excuses of having Covid-19 and your son getting injured these things are all irrelevant to what is going on here.” I couldn’t believe what I was hearing and they let me go. Just like that replaced.

During 2020-2021 I had two teaching jobs, one was tutoring online which I liked a lot. I did this at night and the other was for teaching special education at a charter school back in Waterbury. My son was of age to go to kindergarten so I brought him with me everyday to work and he went to kindergarten while I taught during the day. My son was loving the place and he was thriving and he had two kindergarten teachers who he adored and who adored him back, it was good. I was excited about this job. I did really well with the students and all the paperwork that I had to do, it was good. Until it started to get weird and I felt like something was off. There were things that went on in this school, special education wise that I would question my supervisor on and some things were not being done properly by law. I felt really uncomfortable with this. My principal came to me one day and said is everything okay with you and your supervisor and I reassured her yes that they were. This was during the time in the pandemic where we were in school part of the day and the second half of the day at home teaching on zoom. I had my groups that I would work with and I was trying my very best to follow my supervisors schedule that she made for me, I would document all the hours and days that I would work with my students. She said that I was not following the schedule correctly and I admit that I was in another teachers class when I shouldn’t of been but the schedule was so uneasy to follow that I was having some difficulties with it at times and made mistakes that I quickly corrected and I reassured her that I would get the schedule down pat that I just needed some time to get adjusted to it. Then she would show up in my zooms seeing if I was in the right places at the right times just watching me and she would show up in a zoom and question me after the kids were gone off the zoom as to what it was that I was doing. I told her teaching. Things were getting shady and I could feel all the staff members starting to distance themselves from me and not interact with me anymore. One of the head departments there did not like me with a burning passion because I would always ask her work related questions and she didn’t like to be questioned at all and she made that known to me on several different occasions and I finally had to tell her in an email, “look we all know that you don’t like me but you don’t have to keep harassing me with these degrading emails.” Once I sent that paper trail into motion she stopped for fear that I would legally go after her for defamation of character. I didn’t like the feelings that I was getting from the place. People wouldn’t even look at me and that’s when I knew it was time to go that it was the beginning of the end there. I even found out that teachers would report to my supervisor telling her whether or whether not I was in a zoom with the kids. Again more spies. I couldn’t stay in that toxic environment anymore and I felt so badly for my poor husband having to deal with all of this. I am so glad that he was my rock during these times and supported me no matter what. So, I left and I unenrolled Little Jason from kindergarten and we did homeschooling together until the end of the year. I remember reaching out to one of the paras there that I worked with really well and I asked him in the text if they lost the best special education teacher they had and he said yes that they did unfortunately and he said that it was sad because those kids really need someone like you to help them and now they don’t have that anymore. The kids are the ones to suffer. And its so true the kids are definitely the ones to suffer. These kids were left with nobody until the end of the school year.

Then in 2021 to 2023 I went to be a Reading Specialist in Bridgeport Public Schools. I really liked it for the first two years, I had my groups and I was teaching kids who didn’t know how to read to read, it was really rewarding. I made myself busy everyday pulling kids and going into the classrooms to work with the teachers and the kids on my caseload, it was great. I quickly made friends with every teacher there and I made a special friend with this one girl who I am still in touch with to this day, she is very special to me and I think God sent me to this school to meet her. I can’t say enough good things about her she is so positive, knowledgeable, smart, funny, intelligent, kind, caring, giving, loving and a really great communicator. What I loved the best about us is the enriched deep conversations that we would have together. I am thankful for her.

On another note, I even got to help this one teacher turn his whole class around when he was struggling very badly with severe behaviors in his classroom, it turns out he went to the same high school I went to. I graduated with his little brother and so it was nice to have that connection with him. He really relied on me a lot and it made me feel good to know that I was truly helping him overcome some struggles within his classroom, I would check on his class everyday. I loved it, it was great. Then we got into my third year and on the first day of school my principal comes up to me and says, “I just want to let you know that at the end of this school year your position will be eliminated and there is nothing that I could do to stop it unless an opening comes up for an elementary grade position and you apply for it, there is nothing that I can do.” Just like that. My position there was a grant funded position and there was nothing I could do either accept accept it. I immediately panicked inside. On top of all this there was teaching materials that I needed from the school reading department to do my job correctly and properly with the kids and they weren’t getting me the materials so I started to print them offline but it was too much material for grades K-5, it was just too much. I needed them to come from downtown and they just weren’t being delivered to me. I started to have panic attacks everyday, driving to school each morning not knowing what to do with these kids without the proper materials. It was torturous because I had to come up with my own material everyday and I didn’t feel like I was doing right by these students. My body started having serious anxiety attacks and the depression was coming back heavily I needed more medication to help me cope, but the medication I had just wasn’t doing it for me. Then I started to think that if I was just dead that all of this would be over and I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore. But then I started thinking about my son and husband and how they would be devastated and heartbroken, I couldn’t do that to them. Something needed to happen quickly. I started having suicidal thoughts hard everyday and my mind was being tortured. I would physically shake in the shower. I filled with massive anxiety and fear that I just couldn’t shake. Finally, the thoughts were getting so loud in my head I was actually scared that I was in fact going to kill myself. I remember having a huge nervous breakdown in Staten Island with my in laws and family there. They got to see me unraveled big time. I was scared filled with anxiety and panic at how I would teach these kids without the proper materials. I was perseverating on this whole matter, work and suicide filled my thoughts all weekend long. I scared my in laws and family there, they didn’t know how to help me. I started smoking because of all this. I was chain smoking like it was going out of style due to my nerves being shot, I didn’t know how to cope with it all. I was crying uncontrollably it was awful and I felt badly that I couldn’t stop it and that they had to witness me in such a state of panic. My son was being affected by this tremendously and he didn’t know how to handle it so he would act out and I don’t blame him for that I put my husband and child through hell. I just wanted it all to stop. There were no solutions at all. I can remember my husband being so tired because he couldn’t fall asleep because he was so worried about me and he wasn’t getting good rest he was like a zombie sleep deprived. I can remember going on the Staten Island Ferry with my husband and son and my husband was falling asleep on the ride. I felt awful but didn’t know how to fix any of this. I felt awful that I put my family through all of that. My husband got sick that morning, he had had a vaccine shot the day before so his body was sick from the shot and he spiked a fever, my sister in law had to take care of him for me that morning because I was walking around like a zombie in a state of panic and numbness. She doesn’t know that I heard her say to my mother in law, “She is walking around like a zombie.” She was right I was walking around like a zombie. That hurt me inside but it was the truth there was nothing that I could do at the time. I couldn’t even help myself. When we went home and we had to go to school the next day I panicked big time again. I drove there and then I drove right back out of the parking lot and drove right to Blue Sky’s Behavioral Health and told them that I needed to go to a hospital because I am suicidal and I am getting scared. So phone calls were made and I packed my things up and my father drove me to Four Winds Hospital in New York. I stayed there for almost three weeks, in a completely locked down facility where I was monitored all the time. I hated it you couldn’t do anything and it was a small hospital so there were only so many places that you could walk to within those walls. I felt confined like a caged animal. I wanted to come home the first night and the next night but my family convinced me that this was the place I needed to be in order to get better. I had to complete the FMLA paperwork before I left for school so I wouldn’t get let go. While I was there they discovered through an evaluation that I had bipolar 1. This was why I was getting all the suicidal thoughts. I was already diagnosed at Blue Sky’s with severe depressive disorder and anxiety and now I had another label to tac on. They prescribed me a medication that was new for bipolar patients, but when I got home and got to CVS to pick it up the cost was $7000.00. I couldn’t pay that. So I went back to Blue Sky’s and the doctor there got me on a medication called Geodon and it has worked perfectly for me. My mother in law came to stay at our house while I was away and she helped my husband with everything, the cooking, cleaning. laundry you name it, she helped with my son and I will forever be grateful to her that she was able to come and do that. When I got out I still had feelings of panic the suicidal thoughts went away but I was panicked inside. Through therapy I realized that what I needed to do was radically accept the situation for what it was and just go to my job and do the best that I could do with the materials that I had and I did that and it got better for me. I still felt like I wasn’t growing as a professional and wasn’t really helping the kids but I went anyways. We got our son into therapy after that and he still goes once a week to see his therapist and it has helped him tremendously. I feel like a terrible mother for putting him through that it was a dark time in our lives to say the least. With the thought of not having another job after this because my position would end, I said enough is enough and I applied to my old job in Waterbury the one that I originally left to go on this journey of job after job. There was a few positions opened up and the one that I wanted was the elementary grades 2, 3, and 4 self-contained. I went for the interview and got hired on the spot. I gave my job in Bridgeport a one month notice and that my start date in Waterbury would be December 4th of 2023.

I went back to my old school the one that I should have never left in the first place. All the same staff members were there and my same team that I work with were still there. When I went back it was like I never left. I left off right where I was 7 years ago when I left. I can’t believe that I was away for 7 years. So much had happened in that time, so much struggle but, I learned so much from my career journey. Many valuable hard lessons were learned along the way. I am so grateful that my principal took me back we always maintained a good relationship so for that I am grateful. Now, I love, love, love, my career. I am good at it and I do an excellent job on my paperwork, I am a good teacher and I love my students and all of the staff there. I am blessed to be back. This is right where God has always wanted me to be from the beginning when I worked so hard to get this position in the first place. I am right where I am needed and I feel like I am growing as a professional and making a huge impact on my students lives. Finally, I am needed. I shouldn’t of had to go looking for my hearts desire some place else when it was always in my backyard the whole entire time. I hope to retire here, that is how much I love this school.

If you every find yourself in a similar situation please know that you are not alone and that someone out there has been through it too. Don’t lose faith and hope that you will find your true job that you were meant by God to have. It’s out there it’s just a matter of timing, patience and finding it, it’s there waiting for you. You can be happy in your career or job, you can and you deserve to be happy. When you find it you will know instantly because the feeling is amazing and you will know that you are right where you are meant to be. Don’t give up hope.

I want to dedicate this blog to my husband because during the seven years that I was trying to find myself in a career, he put up with a lot. A lot of sleepless nights, stress, anxiety and worry. I put him through hell at times. He was my rock during those times and I love him for that. Thank you for helping me and being with me in my time of need your strength and your love pushed me through. You are and will forever be my rock in life. I love you with all of my heart and soul you can never ever know how deep my love is for you and how grateful I am to have you as a husband. Thank you Boo, I love you, love me hug and kisses always and forever

Love,

Fran xoxox