Work Flow in (W)hole

So, I’ve been at my job for almost 5 years (on November 20th), and I have loved it. When I first started, we had the most amazing team, and even the person I was replacing, Michelle, was immediately a close friend and someone who I trusted. Savannah was my fellow ed coach, and once Michelle left, we hired Lexi… and our supervisor was Jamie. Savannah quit about a year ago, and Jamie moved away to Denver. She became the distance education coach for the company, and Jess was hired to be our new supervisor. She used to work at the community college that most of our students go to who are in the program. As an education coach, we help our students navigate college, figure out what they want to do with their lives/degrees, and help them manage the workload, the paperwork, getting accommodations for disabilities, and so on. Basically, we teach them how to college. Jamie was such an amazing supervisor that it was honestly devastating when she left. However, it’s been a little bit nice because now we don’t need to hold “professional boundaries,” and she’s now more like one of my very best friends. That said, Jess has a different background than the rest of us who work here… she was the director of the “Outdoor Leadership” program, so she taught some classes and managed an entire degree program. She is used to typical college students, and all of the students we serve here have some kind of disability or neurodivergence. A lot of ADHD, Autism Spectrum, ODD, history of addiction (primarily technology and gaming addictions), and other learning disabilities. We meet students where they’re at and monopolize on what they are capable of, while strengthening their weaker points and helping them come up with ways to compensate. We teach a lot of executive functioning supports (alarms, reminders, google calendars) and study skills.

Well, now that things have shifted and Jess in the education department supervisor, we’ve kind of let go of the fact that this is a mental health care facility and that these are not typical students who are fully capable of college level work and functioning. A lot of them show up and don’t know how to cook anything, run a washing machine, or pay a bill. We also recently lost our Life Coach supervisor to a different company, so now Jess is the supervisor of that department as well. The more things she oversees, the further and further we get away from our original mission, and the less and less I enjoy my job. She says things like “No, don’t do that, HE needs to do it.” He being a student. HE cant do it, that’s why I’m pushing it/pursuing him, accommodating his current abilities, demonstrating and modeling the correct way to proceed… but now I’m being told not to do that. Not to do MY JOB, essentially.. because the students need to initiate things and have the motivation to pursue me and seek out my knowledge. THATS NOT HOW THIS WORKS! They are here for a reason! They CANNOT do the things we are now expecting them to do, for various reasons. They’re not just being lazy, they have actual problems that have led them to this point in their lives and they need to be taught very basic functions that seem absurd, but are truly difficult for them.

So now, all of the other education coaches who were my coworkers have all left. Savannah got weird and political in the last year she was here and it was sort of difficult to be around here by that point, so when she left it was sad but kind of expected.. and then Lexi was in a car accident and she has been put on limited duty such that she can only do activities and wellness topics and is no longer education coaching. It’s been hard for her because Jess has never been up front with her about what her role will be. She is also pregnant, and didn’t know at the time of her horrible car accident (back in February, she almost died, her neck is still in a cervical collar and she can’t turn her head, she had 12 hours of surgery fixing her broken neck) and so she went on medical leave for the car accident and came back announcing that she’s 6 months pregnant. It was kind of tough for all of us to take in, but she’s going to end up on maternity leave in October/November.. so it doesn’t really make much sense to put her in an education role, since she’d be gone mid-way through the fall semester for up to six months. So, Jess hired two new education coaches… Beth, and Shawnna. They are both former high school English teachers, they’re very formal and professional, and they have limited experience with students with disabilities, even less experience with trying to accommodate those disabilities (rather than just sending them to a resource room or a SpEd class/teacher) and they clearly do not understand what we do here. They’re both the complete opposite of who I am as a person AND as an employee. They’re very worried about hours and being professional, cleaning the office, and not “doing things for the students.”

In short, it feels like my entire department is being replaced and that I’m the last man standing at this point. The entire company is shifting, and “making changes” to make it a better program, but to me it seems like a completely different program with a different mission. I don’t think that’s what the owner is going for, but that seems to be what Jess is doing. So now I feel like I’m being pushed out.. I have this sense that “my kind” is not what the company wants, as is clearly illustrated by the fact that the people they’re now hiring are complete opposites of me. I’m sure that partly I’m just reading too far into it, but that’s how it feels. Like I’m being pushed out. I asked Jamie yesterday if she has enough distance ed coaching students to need another staff under her doing distance coaching… she said not yet, but if she gets an influx of students that me making the switch to distance coaching would be pretty doable. I’m so burnt out, and I feel like I don’t fit in here anymore.. it’s annoying, because I WAS HERE FIRST!! They should have to fit in with me, right?? But no. They’re all lined up behind Jess, ready to follow her into battle… and it’s just not the same battle that I’m fighting. We don’t have the same purpose anymore. It feels icky and wrong and I don’t feel welcome. Like I need to be replaced with everyone else.