I thought my time with poor leadership would be one and done with my experience at the design studio, but alas, here we are. Although, I can’t figure out which situation was worse. There was a story being spun about me, and though I don’t know what it is, a specific population of coworkers began treating me differently. This is when I learned I had to be okay with being the villain in someone’s story, and I had to consistently remind myself how good of a person I am, with both my words and actions.
The popular question over the past few months has been “What happened?” Well, here’s the answer, because it goes farther back than a snow week in February:
When I started in the position as library assistant, the actual librarian was on maternity leave, so I spent three months simply figuring it out and doing my best to help people. During that time, I realized how much I love working in the library and how right it felt being in there. When the librarian came back, I was eager to get the 4-1-1 on what my role actually entails (because I never got a job description) and learning about what it means to be a librarian, especially in the education system. A few months pass, and it’s an easy, fun time. March of the spring 2025 semester comes, and I start to see the ugliness in the operation of the library, the lack of leadership and care for helping colleagues. I began doing everything I could to help fellow staff members who were on the receiving end of the librarian’s apathy, and I started seeing the behaviors and personality some colleagues warned me about. When I was able, a good portion of the end of the spring 2025 semester was spent sneaking off into classrooms and literally bawling my eyes out. I had a gut feeling things were going to get worse when she began the process of taking over the school’s student government association, an organization that is honestly way bigger than it needs to be.
Still, I told myself I could stick it out (for the sake of trying to overcome homelessness). I told myself I would be different from the previous two library assistants who did not last more than a year working with the librarian. My hope was to make it to see the class of 2027 walk across the stage, but as the previous 2025-2026 school year progressed, I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Looking back, I was going to events (invited by the librarian) in hopes that it would make me like her and the job more, but I would still be leaving her presence mentally exhausted. Throughout the school year, the mental exhaustion grew and the joy of the job started diminishing. There became a joke among staff about her not working a full week for ninety percent of the fall semester, but she always had an email to send. In January, I started taking my library leadership and management class for my master’s program (because I still loved and love the profession; therefore, I’m getting my master’s in it), and that’s when I really started noticing how messed up the library was with her leadership. Students were pulling me to the side to have conversations about the things they’d hear her say, like the consistent “That’s why I got out of teaching.” Though, she would co-teach a class at the drop of a dime or doing anything for a student in the student government association. Several teachers pulled me aside to talk about the bias she displays, and that’s the reasoning they would go straight to me instead of her; if I was unable to help, they would leave the library because they would rather ask anyone else but her.
On top of this, there were more frequent moments where I could tell she wasn’t paying attention or simply didn’t care about the things I was telling her, unless it was an idea for the library that made her look good, of course. I began to see how ungenuine she is, unless it’s with someone who is truly her friend, like the blonde English teacher. My frustration started increasing because I felt like I was doing way more than I was getting paid, and multiple people either agreed when I expressed my frustration or told me before I had the chance to say a greeting.
All of these emotions and thoughts hit me when we were out for a week in February 2026, when I started to feel peace again and a joy about waking up the next morning, and I finally broke. I stopped conversating and giving ideas and wasting my time and breath. If she asked a question or said to do something, I responded with a simple “Yes” or “Got it.” She took note, of course, and sent an email the Monday of the last week of February. The line in the email that absolutely killed me was about reducing how often I leave the library because it “creates workflow challenges” and forces her to “cover responsibilities”… You mean you couldn’t disappear to do club organization stuff and actually had to do your job??? After receiving the email, I managed to secure my job description and used it as leverage to create some boundaries and withdraw from tasks that became more exhausting and less joyous. I sent, what I thought was, a respectful email to draw my line and also share I had no idea about the goals and expectations she referred to in her initial email (this was before the line about actually doing her job).
Well, then I guess you could say all hell broke loose. Although, it was more of, all versions of aggression broke loose [through email]. I wrote my email in a way that either meant finality or we can talk about it. How did she respond? Out of emotion with a tone of defensiveness and being the victim. To make it better, the school principal was put on the email, which resulted in a meeting between the three of us that was truly a waste of my time. The librarian wanted to get a reaction out of me, tried to throw me under the bus a couple of times. I apologized for going from “100 to 0 in my communication” and didn’t contribute much else. The principal said we didn’t need to be best friends but had to work together, and I anticipated we would operate out of professionalism afterwards.
Wow, was I wrong. The librarian stopped speaking entirely, which was fine by me. Her only mechanism of communication was through her fave: email. Of course, there was so much unnecessary shade and passive aggression and straight up aggressive aggression. I reached a point where I simply stopped responding, especially when she sent the email about taking over the student book club I started because it’s not in my job description (an attempt at trying to throw my words back at me). I remember that particular email because it showed just how manipulative she is. If I could, I would share all the emails, and maybe one day, I will. However, not today, not yet.
At one point in the meeting with the principal, the librarian asks if she’s the reason my joy had diminished. In the moment, I lied and said no because I did not want to nor have the time to get into it (I needed to get to my job with the elementary kids to have my spirits lifted). As I’m sure you’ve gathered, the librarian is definitely the reason my joy diminished. I tried to go some place else in the building to finish out the year with some semblance of peace, but she made enough trips to the front office to whine that the principal took back my move. I’ve been keeping things bottled up, but after a while, I started document all the thoughts and feelings I had when she tried to pull something:
I’ve had the same Monday at noon standing therapy appointment for the entire school year. I didn’t watch the library for a 25-minute enrichment period, when there were no kids in the library, because I was at my standing therapy appointment and what do you do? Go try to pitch a fit to people who also know I have the same standing therapy appointment. Good effort trying to whine about me not being where I was supposed to be because I was taking care of my mental health like I’ve been doing every Monday, and literally everyone knows. Leaders don’t suddenly forget a subordinate’s obligations with a hope to create problems/get the subordinate in trouble.
Forcing an AI project on the students and saying they “love running errands” just goes to show how little you know the students assigned to take the library as a class because a majority of them hate AI. Your errands comment caters to one student, the only student other kids think you care for more because you know his mother. Leaders make an effort to build relationships.
In case you needed to be affirmed that you are not liked among some of your colleagues, your emails tend to go directly to the trash. It explains why the four emails you sent about signing graduation cards got minimal traction, and it took another staff member sending an email to get people to care and pay attention. Leaders don’t hide behind a computer screen (or since you sometimes waited until you were in the hallway to send an email, behind a phone screen).
The one time people would’ve actually read your emails is if you sent reminders or warnings about big things happening involving the school technology and their saved files. Instead, on more than one occasion, you blatantly disregarded the advice of the school technician to notify staff of the important technology things happening. Then you made a comment along the lines of “That’s why they shouldn’t have thousands of unread emails in their work inbox.” Leaders notify colleagues about information that could affect their workflow, especially for those who have specific software on their devices.
Something that upset me for a long time: The fact that, despite (what I mistakenly thought was a productive) one-on-one conversation with the principal, the librarian still got away with not doing the bare fundamentals of her job, like having me take attendance during AP testing and passive aggressively telling the admin I’ll watch the library students in a separate part of the building so she can sit in other teachers’ classrooms and do… what? Leaders simply don’t do that. They don’t persuade their higher up to alter a decision for the sake of their selfish desires. If necessary, they do what some call “the grunt work.” Truthfully, sometimes a leader with a narcissistic ego needs to do the grunt work to be humbled (which is exactly why I left the library the way I did on my last day). Also, again, no effort to build relationships with the students, and during AP testing was prime time to do it!
Another example of childish behavior: Erasing every library Instagram post I was in. I understand doing that on your personal account, which I’m sure I was never apart of, but if you were going to do it on the public school library account, maybe you should have waited until I left the school. There are a lot of students who are rooting for me and were quick to tell me. Again, leaders simply don’t do that, especially if they’re mature.
No more getting the third degree over email about stupid stuff like sending a student to a teacher with a color printer because the one in the library was unavailable, and believe it or not, there are staff members willing to help if you don’t have a bad rapport with them. It’s not my fault you’re out of the library more than you’re in it and making no effort to establish/build relationships with coworkers. Truly, engagement is one of the library’s biggest problems, and one of the first steps to improving it is improving engagement with colleagues. Leaders trust their subordinates to make the appropriate call when there are limitations and no leader present.
You try to control things… in a room where you’re hardly ever present. I sat in a corner and did nothing so you could run off to who knows where, which left me consistently telling people “I’m the wrong person to ask” when they came looking for you. I was simply a body, and I often saw the frustrations from both students and staff who needed you but, like me, had no idea where you were.
I’ll never forget the time the power went out at school and the next day, I get in early to alleviate some of the problems I knew were coming. The librarian was going on a field trip to tour a college then attend the state fair with her best friend (the blonde English teacher), even though her presence was literally not necessary. As I’m working to get the SRO’s technology back working after the power outage (because he is a top priority), she asks me to make her friend a coffee for her to pick up when she gets to the school… where in my job description does it say I am a personal assistant?
When I started in the position, many people told me I looked happier. Some of those same people also warned me that you’re “a b**ch” (quoting them exactly; kind of crazy when multiple people use the same word to describe you), and they expressed concern about my smile diminishing when you returned. Obviously, it did, over the course of a year until I could no longer take your apathy for people and your incessant need to have power to control people without establishing relationships with them. Though some of your peers use the previous particular b-word to describe you, I would more so use “bully” or “unprofessional [AF].”
What’s so funny about all this is you’re on the school’s leadership team, but a word that should not be used to describe you is “leader.”
