Would this be considered retaliation?
So I’ll try to keep the story vague and short for privacy of everyone involved. This is obviously just my perspective on the situation.
I’ve been working at a center for about 6 weeks now, this is my first time working with the age group and I’m very much learning as I go, although I’ve been told repeatedly that I am doing good so far.
Over the past couple of weeks, I have noticed that my lead teacher (my direct superior) has been increasingly harsh towards me. This got to a point where it was affecting me emotionally and making it harder to do my job. I decided to have a private conversation with my coworker who I’ve grown to trust during a break and ask for advice on how to handle the situation. Unfortunately, someone overheard and it got back to the lead teacher. She confronted me while very heated and said a lot of mean things about how I shouldn’t trust people and she has people keeping their eye on me. She also said she was going to “get me in trouble” for various things that were quite frankly just not true.
I decided to bring it up to the program manager who is her boss to explain the situation where she decided we should have a meeting to clear the air and see if we can move past it. I said that was a good idea and moved on with my day, the lead teacher had left at this point.
The next day was rough with her being rude to me and rolling her eyes at me but I was just trying to focus on the kids. She was visibly treating me differently than the other assistant teacher in the room. At the end of her shift, right before she left, she decided to bring up to me that she was upset that I “wrote her up.” I tried to defuse the situation by telling her to just go and enjoy her weekend and get some rest because it wasn’t a good idea to hash this out while things are so heated, however she kept on berating me over reporting to her superior. I think she was trying to bait me into saying something bad because she kept on seeking validation from the other teacher who was visibly uncomfortable and who made it clear that they didn’t want to be involved and that they didn’t know what was going on. It is also worth mentioning that this happened during nap time and a couple of the toddlers who had just started waking up witnessed the whole thing.
Am I going crazy here? I don’t even really understand how it got to this point. Can this be considered retaliation? I feel like she became hostile towards me because I told a superior. Appreciate all perspectives.