The Not So Secret (But Still Widely Unknown) Lives of TK-12 Public School Teachers
This Week: Karen Weinberg
by Brian Lees
Karen Weinberg taught in our district for eight years before quitting her job in 2015 to get her real estate license and move to Chandler, Arizona, where she now lives as a single mom of two boys and has a very successful real estate practice. She is one of a handful of former teachers and administrators who have also made a similar move to selling real estate. Most of Karen’s teaching career was spent as a special education teacher at Bernardo Heights Middle School. In 2012, Karen was viciously attacked and injured by one of her students, an emotionally disturbed special education student. Physical attacks and assaults on TK-12 teachers are on the rise everywhere, but have been very noticeably more prevalent in our district, as district leadership and district policy give more latitude to students with extreme behaviors being placed in general education settings, where students often act out because they feel out of place, and teachers are neither trained nor prepared for the placement of such students, which often occurs without any additional support personnel, despite what might appear in the student’s IEP (Individualized Education Plan). Karen’s experience with the repercussions of being attacked and seeking appropriate actions after the fact was unique at the time but is becoming more and more all the time a far too common narrative in the field of education.
What was your biggest challenge in your teaching career?
Well, that would have to be the day my life changed, in the middle of my fifth year of teaching a middle school special day non severely handicapped class, a student who was misidentified and should have been placed in an emotionally disturbed classroom setting, picked up his chair and smashed it full force into the left and back sides of my head, neck, and shoulders, in response to my matter-of-fact reply to his question as to why his assignment needed to be done again. The force of the blow knocked me against the rolling storage cabinet I was standing in front of and to the floor, further injuring my neck, shoulders, and also my arms and wrist, as I tried to brace myself for the fall. I was so stunned, I don’t know for sure if I passed out or not, but I was definitely out of it. The student who attacked me ran from the classroom and was later tracked down by other staff members. The other students in the class sat in stunned silence before one of them left to get the teacher next door, and eventually help was called. My aide had called in sick that day and no sub had been found for her—this was a pretty common occurrence in our district—so this was why I had no other adult in the room to support me or even be a reliable witness to what had happened. The physical consequences were 12 stitches to my head and face, a neck brace for several days, and months of physical therapy, with some days, even this many years later, me still not feeling the same again. But that was nothing compared to the emotional agony I was to go through.
Most people would think that would be the end of that. SOMETHING would happen to this student, right? Administration would do its diligence. Or the law. Or somebody. Or, at least there would be some sense of sympathy and support. Instead, I was told the student would be removed from my class for an on-campus suspension, but only until I apologized to him for what I said. I was told by my principal that the student who attacked me did so because he detected sarcasm in my voice in my response to his question. The student would then return to my class. He had a special provision in his IEP (Individualized Education Plan) for behavior manifestations that allowed him to avoid consequences for some of his behaviors if he felt provoked. I was offered nothing. No sympathy. No support. I was told I could not send the student out of my room, even if he was growing agitated again. How was I to feel safe in this environment?
I filed for worker’s compensation due to my injuries and got my doctor to get me excused from work for the remainder of the year. I hated leaving some of my students with almost three months left in the school year, but I felt I had no choice. I could not face this student again. While I was away from school, my principal began harassing me because I was costing the district money (worker’s comp, sub pay), and the parent of the student who attacked me was angry that I never apologized to her son and just up and left. He also became even more harassing when he found out that I not only had gone to my union for support in getting the student removed from my class and a reversal of the order to apologize to him, but then had gone outside of my union to get outside legal support.
The school year ended. I returned to work for the following school year. Because I had gone to a family member in the legal profession and put pressure both on the district and the union, I was finally given some support in the form of a provision in my teaching contract that all IEPs were to be examined closely before placement of students in classes, and I was not to receive another student with similar emotional disturbances or behavior manifestations again, due to my experience the previous year. I found that because of this, I was blacklisted. My principal came down on me, giving me less favorable evaluations, less favorable teaching assignments, making me move classrooms with limited support in moving (despite my injury), even saying negative things about me to other staff members and parents. It was hell. I was becoming more disillusioned with my school, my job, my class, my district, and even my profession. I began seriously considering leaving the profession. My mom had sold real estate for a while in the 1980s and 90s to bring in some extra income to our family while I was growing up, so I went back to school part time to work on getting a real estate license. Eventually, I decided to work on getting licensed in Arizona, so I began an online program for that state. One of my boy’s fathers lives in Arizona, and the word on the street was that it was a good real estate market because of diverse properties, good pricing, high demand, and one of the best average salaries of any state, and I had been thinking of leaving California anyway because it was just too expensive for me to get anywhere, whether on a teacher salary or trying to sell real estate in a flooded local market. Once I was able to find a suitable place in Chandler for me and my boys and was able to start selling real estate in the state of Arizona, I resigned my teaching position and moved.
What role did our union (Poway Federation of Teachers) play in supporting you, and if a new teacher came to you and asked you if they should join the union and if it is worth it, what experiences would you share with them to help them decide?
Yes and no. The union was very slow to help me. They did a good job of taking my calls, listening, and communicating with me promptly and often. But that’s all they did. In the end, I had to seek outside legal help to light a fire under them and get some results. I shouldn’t have to do that if I am paying dues for them to work for me and not just be another agent of the district. Once they got wind of me having a lawyer, they started working much harder for me. The union president at the time admitted to a “we’ll scratch your back if you scratch ours” approach to negotiating with the district. That seems to work well for salary increases and stuff like that, but not for individuals like me who have a specialized case and need help, but that help might go against what the district wants as a whole, and the union is reluctant to really go to bat for just one person who might jeopardize this “scratch your back if you scratch ours” agreement. What I felt was that one person doesn’t matter and isn’t important enough, you’re just one teacher, and you’re actually replaceable (the district had hired a replacement for me within a week of the school year ending of my final year of teaching). I think if I had to do it all over again or if I was telling someone new to the profession what they should do, I would tell them to save their money (from union dues) and put it toward a prepaid legal program that might be more effective. But then again, it’s been a long time since I’ve been a teacher or even thought about unions, and I know they did get us some great settlements that we might not have had without them.
What was one of your greatest successes as a teacher?
I wish I could say that I felt I had been successful as a teacher. I mean, I know I helped students learn and reach their goals, but all of that seems just like a blur compared to what I could have done and could be talking about right now, especially after all I went through and those final months where I had lost the fire and passion I thought I had when I first started. I guess I hope that there are other teachers out there who will find out what I went through and will know that they don’t have to just shut up and take it like I was told to do. Maybe that will be my greatest success or contribution.
Brian Lees is a 28-year veteran public elementary school teacher currently teaching 5th grade at a school in the Sabre Springs neighborhood of the Poway Unified School District. During his time as an educator, he has spent 25 of those years as a school site union representative, the last five years as a delegate from his union to the San Diego-Imperial Counties Labor Council, many months as a key organizer of frequent food distributions in conjunction with the Labor Council and Palomar College during the height of the COVID pandemic (June 2020 to November 2021), and most recently was appointed as the Secretary of the COPE Committee for his union, the Poway Federation of Teachers (AFT Local 2357). The son of two retired teachers who also volunteered their time as union leaders, one as a site rep in San Bernardino City Schools and the other as an executive director in Associated Teachers of Metropolitan Riverside, he comes from a long line of educators and active pro-labor advocates. He lives in northeast Escondido with his two dogs and 8-year-old daughter, and his hobbies include reading, writing, composing music, and photography, the last of which he hopes to share in future issues of The Jumping-Off Place, in a photo essay series called “My Esco.”