I'm going to preface this by saying this is my 3rd year out of nursing school and my first year as a full-time school nurse. I was a substitute school nurse for 1/2 of the year in 2018 and was offered a job at a school that...suspiciously lost 12 teachers, their nurse, and an old secretary to other schools. The Principal has only been with the school for 2 years now and the AP came on halfway through last spring. I have no idea what happened to the old AP.
I was highly demanded by some of the more prominent schools in the district as a sub. I long-term subbed at one school for 6 months and I was told that I needed to come back and sub for them every time. It was just an amazing experience and I worked with staff who were fully supportive and experienced. And when I first came into my current school, things went pretty well. My numbers were high, but I attributed that to the inexperience of the teachers. I would send out emails with tips on helping students with common ailments outside of the health suite and whatnot. And overall, I was told I was doing a good job by the AP. I had a few hiccups here and there, but after a while, the true face of the school started to show.
My principal started by requesting that I call all parents for every visit to "save" myself "from the trouble," which I and my supervisor explained to her was not feasible, but I would attempt to call more often. More time went by and I come to find out she made multiple complaints against me to my supervisor for situations outside of my control and somewhat due to my own lack of experience. I've been trying to adapt and meet her expectations, but I've been thrown under the bus so many times that I don't feel that I can trust my principal to have my back.
i.e. today I sent a student back to class after observing and checking them out after getting knocked on the head with the stall door in the bathroom 15 minutes. Student denied HA/SA/dizziness/somnolence and stated feeling better. Teacher contacted parent 10 minutes later and the parent contacted me literally moments before I got around to making the phone call home due to an altercation that came in that I had to address and call home for. Teacher told parent she was sleeping in class and about the head injury. I literally picked up the phone and was like "oh, hi so and so, I was just about to call you. Blah blah blah came in because she hit her head on the....what? Sleepy? No one told me this. Let me go find her, I'm going to recommend a pickup w/ f/u." Mom was already on her way per the teacher's request. Couldn't find the student because teacher had dropped her off to lunch (sleepy eh?) and then had picked her class back up after calling mom and walked the student to the front office for dismissal. She did not speak to me once. So I went to address the situation with the principal first because I am trying to improve my communication with her. I'm the one who got in trouble and was told: "This is what I heard happened." Proceeds to tell me details I had not heard from the teacher (bruise on the kids forehead) and then she said "the teachers are just going to keep overstepping you if this keeps happening." She didn't even mention correcting the teacher or that not telling me about the student was wrong.
I know I could have worked on communicating with the teacher...but it goes both ways. My health suite was extremely busy and I could barely get around to calling parents because of the constant flow coming into the health suite, today especially with all the fights.
Every time there is a complaint about something from a teacher, I always end up getting these emails late at night saying "you did such and such....and it was wrong." My anxiety keeps going up because of these. I get to work every day scared that she's trying to get me fired or that I'm going to do something wrong. There's just this constant lack of feedback and I'm too scared to talk to her because I can tell she doesn't like me...or maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.
How have you handled difficult administrators in the past, or currently? I need wisdom. My supervisor is very laid back and doesn't really offer me good advice. Stories of your own experiences are also welcome. I learn well through example.
(P.S. I'm sorry if this is really jumbled. My brain is just fried and I'm kind of falling apart.)
