Marin, stop bullying your teachers

Feb. 19--It has been a hard year to be a woman. Not that it's ever really been easy, but the past year has been especially challenging, from the election of a genital-grabbing president who has been accused by 21 women of sexual misconduct, from the increasing assault on women's reproductive rights, from the rise of the #MeToo movement and the inevitable backlash, to (again) the president who recently defended his staff secretary, Rob Porter, even though his two former wives and a former girlfriend say he abused them.

Over and over, women are being dismissed and ignored. And now Marin is having its #MeToo moment.

Earlier this month, Tamalpais High School teacher Eva Rieder came public with her story, that she has been sexually harassed by her male students more than a dozen times, from physical touching to obscene emails, letters and phone calls, and her complaints to administrators years ago basically landed on deaf ears.

As if that isn't shocking enough, just read through the comments on Keri Brenner's exceptional story, which went viral -- many are blaming Rieder for wearing tight pants; being a bad teacher; for walking, talking and looking "in a way that would attract attention;" using the attention to promote her romantic fantasy novel (which hasn't even been published yet), and for out-and-out lying. In other words, it's her fault -- not the students'.

Any woman who has ever shared her own story of abuse or harassment knows exactly what that feels like. It's what she wore, it's what she said, it's what she did. She was "asking for it."

This is, of course, a switch on the usual situation, where the person with the power uses it to intimidate and harass subordinates. Teachers should be able to control their classrooms, right? But research shows that even women who are in charge face "stereotypical gender beliefs about their 'natural' abilities," and that women in authority may even be more frequent targets of sexual harassment.

Let's call it what it is: misogyny, it's keeping women "in their place," and there's a huge misogynistic attitude among Tam's male students, says social studies teacher Luc Chamberlain.

"The time has come. Women are gonna take charge of society," former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon fearfully said of the #MeToo movement.

I sure hope so, because, frankly, we're fed up.

Bullying and abusing teachers is not just a Marin problem -- it's an "overlooked crisis," according to the National Education Association.

The U.S. Department of Education in 2015 noted that 20 percent of public school teachers were victims of verbal abuse and 10 percent of physical abuse.

"Teachers being bullied by their own students occurs more often than most people realize, and often this is a form of bullying that goes unreported," writes New York high school science teacher Sarah Sorge.

And it's not just in the classrooms. Students bash teachers on social media, too, and vandalize their cars and property.

Reports to administrators -- and even to parents -- often lead to nothing, Sorge says, so "teachers are often rendered powerless in the face of bullying students and feel they have nowhere to turn to that will give relief."

"When we look on the national scene and we wonder how the Harvey Weinsteins are being made -- we're making them," Redwood High School math teacher Jessica Crabtree, who encouraged Rieder to tell her story, scolded high school district board members for administrators' inaction.

Given the rampant abuses from high-powered men we've seen recently, our teens obviously have a lot of role models for this kind of disgusting behavior. And who knows what's going on at home? Domestic abuse is Marin's top violent crime.

What will this lead to?

For Rieder, it means scaling back her teaching. But others are thinking about leaving education altogether. A recent MetLife Survey of the American Teacher indicates there has been a decline in teacher satisfaction in the U.S. in the past few years.

Is this what we want -- to bully teachers out of their profession? Who will teach our children?

So I ask you, Marin school administrators, what are you going to do?

I ask you, Marin parents, what are you going to do?

And you, Marin students -- what are you going to do? It's your future.

Vicki Larson's So It Goes runs every other week. Contact her at vlarson@marinij.com and follow her on Twitter at OMG Chronicles

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