Vindicated, kind of...

Last night I went to a retirement function for George, one of the guys I used to teach with at Emerald. There were about 50-60 people there - all the good people, no administration or any of their toadies. It was great to catch up with them all. Haha, they all commented on how well I look! It's the lack of stress. A lot of people complain that teachers' hours are too short (ha, no-one ever counts the work done at home!), holidays too long, etc. But if you ever saw the haggard looks in a staff room at the end of any term you wouldn't even think to say any of that.
Anyway, after dinner were the speeches. George spoke at length about the school and the state of education in general. He kept referring to what had happened to me and how wrong that was. Then he apologised, on behalf of himself and the staff, to me for not having the guts to stand up and resist what was happening. He apologised for allowing the fucking arsehole to get away with harrassing me out of the job. Of course I burst into tears. There were a lot of sheepish looking faces around the room at that point. Afterwards I got lots of pats on the back and hugs. A couple of people admitted to feeling guilty about it all. It was just a really nice moment to know that the people who mattered knew that I hadn't really done anything wrong, certainly nothing that all of them haven't done too. I'd always had this suspicion that people believed I'd gone "bad" and that I deserved what happened. It's nice to know that's not the case.
Just a shame that they didn't stand up and be counted when it mattered.

But then I wouldn't be sitting here doing this - swings and roundabouts I guess.