Tom and Rita: An Ethical Miasma
The narrative of Tom and Rita would be an ethical dilemma that would test me from the beginning of my principalship and cause me to probe the depths of my values, emotions, and beliefs. My interactions with them would challenge my principles and match the ethic of care against the ethics of critique and justice, the community,and the profession.
Tom and Rita formed a two-person team, teaching the school’s dropout prevention (DOP) students. She taught language arts and social studies, and he taught math and science. They also shared an instructional paraprofessional named Rhonda. Their students demonstrated severe discipline problems and had lost the “right” to be mainstreamed with other students. They were isolated from the rest of the school and self-contained in the classrooms of Tom and Rita.
These students were troubled at school and troubled at home. Mixed among them were children with emotional and learning disabilities. Some had been sexually abused. Most had been physically abused. Few lived with both biological parents. Many slept on a sofa or the floor or shared a bed with a sibling or two. They lived in a world where sex was casual and substance abuse was commonplace. Teaching them was challenging at best, and few could do it successfully, but Tom and Rita had struck a rapport with their students and managed their instruction as well as anyone I had seen.
My extended encounters with Tom and Rita began on Day Four of my career as middle school principal when Janice, my secretary, walked into my office and shut the door. “Tom’s wife wants to see you. She’s been crying and says she has to talk to you right away.”
Mrs. Byrd was a small, frail woman. She wore no makeup. Her uncombed blonde hair hung listlessly across her eyes, which were red and matted. I asked her to sit at the table adjacent to my desk.
“Mr. Lane, I’m Veronica Byrd, wife of one of your teachers. I know you don’t know me, but I’ve got a big problem. My husband is having an affair with one of your teachers. I confronted them with it last week. I have two young children, and she’s wrecking our lives.” You need to do something about it. And if you don’t, I will, and that won’t be pretty.”
I didn’t know what to say, but I knew I had to say something. I was the principal, and I was supposed to know what to do. “I know this is upsetting, Mrs. Byrd, but this doesn’t have anything to do with the school. It sounds like a private matter between you and your husband.”
“It’s not private any more. She called and left a message on my phone. She said, ‘You better watch your back, bitch.’ That’s it. I’m not going to take any more. I’m done with him. I’ve decided I’m going to divorce him. He can have her. But you better tell her to stop calling and threatening me, or she’ll be sorry. They both will.”
The next step was to conference with Tom and Rita individually. I had only been on the job four days, and I hadn’t even met them. Rita was tall and sleek. Her hair was jet black, short, cropped over her ears and styled close to her face. Her subdued makeup highlighted her dark eyes, pink cheeks, and cherry lips. Her fingernails were neatly manicured and painted with a soft pastel that matched her lipstick. She wore a colorful, patterned rose and lavender blouse with a dark lavender skirt. She wore two bracelets, a matching necklace and matching earrings. Her shoes were leather flats that matched her handbag, both light shades of pink. I remember thinking she was certainly well dressed for a planning day.
Our conversation set the pattern for many future conferences. I told each of them about my meeting with Mrs. Byrd earlier that morning. Rita appeared shocked.
“Mr. Lane, first, I want you to know I am embarrassed by everything you have told me. Tom and I do have a personal relationship, but he and his wife have been separated since the beginning of the summer. He’s moved out of the house and told her he’s filing for divorce. What’s more, Mr. Lane, I didn’t call her. She called me and left a threatening message on my phone. I think I should file charges against her. Mr. Lane, I know you don’t know me, but I am a very professional person. I want you to respect me professionally. I take great pride in my work, and I would never do anything to damage my job or my reputation. I never mix my personal and professional life. Any relationship I have with Tom is strictly private and away from school.”
Tom took a different approach. He was dressed in jeans, a tight-fitting polo and scuffed sneakers. He was tall and intense, about 6 feet tall and well built. Bright and articulate, he had a deep, clear voice that commanded the room when he argued a point, which was often.
I told him about my conversation with his wife. He pressed forward in his chair.
“Look, my wife’s crazy. I moved out and told her I’m filing for divorce. What I do on my own time is my business. She doesn’t have any business coming in here. She’s threatened to have me arrested, and now she’s trying jeopardize my job. She’s a screaming lunatic. Our marriage is over. I’m in the right here. I’m minding my own business, and she comes in here butting her nose where it doesn’t belong. She had better back off.” Tom had a way about him that was menacing. His eyes were intense. He looked directly at you when he talked. He wasn’t threatening, exactly, but he did make me uncomfortable.
“OK,” I said, “I don’t know about any of that. You know I just got here. She came to see me. I didn’t seek her out. I’m just telling you what she said, and what I told her. But you have to keep your personal issues private and away from school and away from the kids.” During that meeting I advised each of them that a violation of the Florida educator code of ethics could cause them to lose their jobs. They said they understood and that I would have nothing to worry about.
What a mess, I thought. I was just trying to figure out this new job and was presented with this remarkable distraction. Here was my dilemma: Who was telling the truth? What business was it of mine who did what with whom? They all seemed sincere and appropriately indignant that I would question their integrity. I didn’t personally approve of adultery, but who was I to judge them?
After school began, a pattern developed. Tom and Rita would be out the same days, and they began to miss work more often. Then one day, about a month after school started, Tom and Rita came to me. Rita began.
“Mr. Lane, as I told you at the beginning of the year, I always strive to be a professional and not to mix my personal and professional life. But something happened that has made me very upset and crossed the line.” She went on to say that one of her students had asked her if she and Mr. B. were going to get married. He also asked if she was going to have Mr. B’s baby.
“This is Rhonda’s fault,” Tom snarled. “She’s been talking to the kids about us. She’s trying to slander me. I’ll go to the union. I won’t put up with this.” I told them both to calm down. I would look into it and put a stop to the nonsense.
When I spoke to Rhonda, she had a different version of events.
“Of course I didn’t say anything to the kids. I don’t have to. They’re back and forth in each other’s rooms all day. You should talk to some of the kids and see what they have to say. They see enough of this kind of garbage at home. They don’t need to see it at school.”
And so I did speak with several students.
Rhonda was right. They didn’t need this. One asked me if Tom and Rita were getting married, because they were together all the time. Another said that on a recent weekend he had helped Tom move furniture between apartments. He said Rita was there.
In my follow-up conversation with Tom, he admitted the boy helped him move.
“He’s a big guy and was a lot of help. I paid him, and he appreciated the money. If Rita’s there, that’s my business. I’m on my own time then.”
I agreed but told him and Rita they couldn’t act that way and then become angry when students talk. I directed both of them to stay away from each other during school hours, except when professionally necessary.
Other conflicts ensued. In one incident they went off campus for lunch and were late coming back. I issued them formal reprimands, and theyfiled a grievance with the superintendent against me for harassment.
After Tom’s grievance was reconciled, I told him that despite our conflicts, I wanted to help him and would do whatever I could to do so. One afternoon he called me on my cell phone.
“Jim, I’m taking you at your word. You said you wanted to help, so let’s see if you meant what you said.” As Tom talked, he began to cry. He told me that Rita was a “hopeless alcoholic.” He said she “holds it together at work; but when she gets home, all hell breaks loose. She starts drinking as soon as she walks in the door, and she keeps going until she passes out. I’m really worried about her,” he sobbed. “I love her, and I’m afraid she’s going to end up killing herself.”
Tom said they had recently quarreled over her drinking. He was trying to take the booze away from her, and she threw him out of the apartment they were sharing. He also said he was suffering through his own addiction to prescription narcotics. A veteran of Desert Storm, he said the Veteran’s Administration psychiatrists had freely prescribed anti-depressants and painkillers after he returned home. Now he was addicted, still prone to bouts of depression, and had difficulty controlling his temper when off his medication. I was stunned at the frankness of his admissions. I felt a flood of conflicting emotions, including vindication, anger, and relief. I was also flattered that he had called me. Maybe, I thought, my efforts to care had paid off.
When I met with Rita, she was less willing to talk than Tom. She first accused Tom of trying to ruin her life because she had broken up with him. She finally agreed, however, to call about the district’s counseling program.
Meanwhile, Tom agreed to commit to counseling and rehabilitation. He was no longer the combative Tom who had filed a grievance the previous year. I think I was still swayed by my empathy. I saw my father in his place, and so my past continued to dominate my present. I think that again, naively, I was hoping things would reconcile.
Closure on Tom and Rita
In late March Rita failed to appear for a hearing to determine a student’s educational placement. She did not call in sick until later in the day. Such hearings are legal events that require much scheduling of administrators, teachers, and parents. Missing one is significant. For that I issued her a formal letter of reprimand. Further breaches, I noted, could result in her dismissal.
Soon after, Tom committed a similar legal breach. He left his class while proctoring the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT), the high stakes test tied to school and student rewards and advancement. He told Rhonda, the assistant, that he was leaving, but he never alerted the school’s test coordinator, an administrator or even my secretary. For that I issued him another formal reprimand.
Those were the last formal communications I had with either of them. At the end of the year they both resigned, and I lost track of them.
Epiphanies and the Ethic of critique
I think I’ve always felt that accuracy begets fairness, which seems to me squarely mounted within the ethic of justice. I also think I had an underlying belief in some sort of universal truth. If we could all agree on the facts, we could agree on the solution. I was beginning to learn, however, that ethical dilemmas cloud that certainty. My job was not to judge their morality. The ethics of my profession, however, required me to ensure the smooth operation of school and protect their students.
There was certainly justice to be had for the teachers who were subject to their abuses. There should also have been justice for the students who witnessed those ethical breaches and whose education was compromised because their teachers’ focus was always elsewhere.
My experiences with Tom and Rita caused me to confront many issues within myself. I believe I favored too much the ethics of careand too little the ethic of critique. The harsh truth is that students who are at risk of failure in school are often in that situation because their parents fail to advocate for them. Starratt notes that the ethic of critique confronts “structures and procedures and policies that affect whole groups of people unfairly on a regular basis” (2012, p. 49). If Tom and Rita had been teaching students in an advanced elective or gifted program, it is unlikely those parents would have been silent as the teachers argued and missed work. Under different circumstances, I as an administrator might also have been more vigilant. Thus, as the ethic of critique charges, the students were the ultimate victims. They were the ones the system was supposed to serve, and ironically, they were the ones the system through codes and procedures failed to protect. I have learned it is incumbent upon school leaders to speak for these unrepresented groups, a charge to which I think I did not at first effectively respond.
I continue to believe school leaders must begin our work with compassion, realizing such compassion will create ethical dilemmas. While we should never lose our empathy and compassion for everyone, our focus on our students must move ultimately toward predominant compassion and justice for them. Therein lies the conflict, the judgment call, and the pain.