Luna
Content Warning: These stories are about violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation and may include references to suicide or self-harming behaviours. They may contain graphic descriptions and strong language and may be distressing. Some narratives may be about First Nations people who have passed away. If you need support, please see Contact & support.
Luna used to be a fashion and textiles teacher. She has a hearing disability and uses hearing aids, but still had difficulty hearing students and staff.
Luna felt that teaching staff at her school didn’t understand the nature of her disability or ‘how to relate to a person with a hearing disability’. They seemed to think she was ‘deliberately being difficult or obstructive’. They became impatient and treated her ‘with contempt’. Luna told the Royal Commission she experienced ‘bullying, isolation, intimidation, marginalisation, unfounded disciplinary action, baseless accusations and lack of support’ during the several years she spent teaching at the school.
There were many examples of this. If there was a meeting, staff would signal to each other before leaving the staffroom to walk to the meetings together. Luna missed the signals and often missed the meetings. One time she called out to them to wait so she could walk with them. They ignored her and kept walking.
Another time, while she was preparing materials for a class, she noticed a number of teachers from her faculty go into another room. It turned out they were attending the demonstration of the ‘new, long awaited, very expensive 3D printer’. She felt angry and excluded and asked if they forgot to let her know about the demonstration. The faculty head was dismissive, saying it wasn’t important.
On a few occasions during faculty meetings, some staff made ‘hurtful comments and behaviour’ directed at Luna. The faculty head ignored it and ‘showed no support or consideration’ for her.
This faculty head often excluded her from meetings, and never chatted to her informally in the same way he did with other staff. Yet he would then draw attention to the fact that she had missed meetings or not attended events.
Management and other teachers repeatedly ignored Luna’s requests for accommodations or assistance.
At one stage Luna asked for assistance in dealing with ongoing behaviour and learning issues in her year 10 class. Initially there was no response. Then one day, without warning, the head of the senior school came to her class to talk to the students. He asked Luna to leave so the students would be able to ‘speak freely’.
‘I felt seriously disadvantaged by this, it undermined me, excluded from dialogue and did not allow me to contribute. This was the only time anyone came to speak to students about their behaviour towards me and I was prevented from being included. I received no feedback. I did not see this as supporting me, I felt intimidated and left in the dark.’
About four years into her time at the school, the faculty head changed Luna’s timetable and working conditions with no consultation or warning. It turned out they had offered a less senior teacher her choice of Luna’s classes. This resulted in Luna being taken off her textiles class, which she had been instrumental in ‘designing, implementing, trialling, adjusting’ for the state’s Certificate of Education. It also meant she now had a larger class of younger and ‘exceedingly noisy’ students, a much less manageable situation for a teacher with a hearing disability.
At the same time, the faculty head asked Luna to assist the incoming teacher with delivery of the textile class. ‘This made me feel I was in fact training my replacement,’ she said.
‘I felt insulted and undervalued … I really felt like I didn’t matter. I also felt they wanted to get rid of me.’
Around the same time, the school had a series of student suicides. Staff were put on ‘suicide watch’. Luna had had her own experience with suicide and felt ‘traumatised’. She wrote to the headmistress about how she felt about being on suicide watch. She never received a response.
Luna was feeling desperate. She went to the state association for the Deaf for help. They provided an advocate who assessed her ‘as being in need of immediate intervention in the workplace’. But this never happened.
‘I experienced despair. I was severely depressed. I was shut down. My health deteriorated significantly and I could no longer cope, which forced me to leave work. I have not worked again. The lack of support from my employer and the result of the discrimination robbed me of the ability to earn a living.’
Disclaimer: This is the story of a person who shared their personal experience with the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability through a submission or private session. The names in this story are pseudonyms. The person who shared this experience was not a witness and their account is not evidence. They did not take an oath or affirmation before providing the story. Nothing in this story constitutes a finding of the Royal Commission. Any views expressed are those of the person who shared their experience, not of the Royal Commission.