My flat viewing

Part 16
Nursery Teachers

Let’s start with Phils nursery teacher comments.

Phils assumption that I would excitedly jump at the chance to be a nursery teacher is so layered with bigotry its hard to know where to begin.

If Phil had made this comment knowing absolutely nothing about my employment history, that would have been misogynistic enough, in my opinion, given that is my belief that he only assumed I would love to be a nursery teacher because I wasn’t born with a penis.

I’m confident to continue based on that opinion, as Phil was aware that I had just lost my job at Santander which is a bank, not a nursery or day care. He was aware I had both wanted, and fought, to continue working at Santander, as I told him my fight for reasonable adjustments had gone on for so long, and was so difficult, that it had exacerbated my illness. If I hadn’t wanted to stay employed with Santander, them refusing me reasonable disability adjustments would have been the perfect excuse for me to leave Santander and find another job. On top of that, I had been clear that part of the reason I attempted suicide was because I lost my job.

All of this is enough for me to be sure I’m right, and its not even taking into consideration the two biggest cluse I had no desire to be a nursery teacher.

The first of which, is that I obviously applied for a job at Santander which is bank.

The second being that I was almost thirty two at the time of my viewing, if I had wanted to be a nursery teacher, I would have already been a nursery teacher.

Which raises the question of whether or not that other female tenant had wanted to be a nursery teacher, or whether it was Phils idea.

As well as the question of why, if Phil thinks being a nursery teacher would be such a nice job, he isn’t one.

After all, this was 2018. Surely Phil is aware its ok for men to want to be nursery teachers, and for women not to.

None of this is me looking down on nursery teachers, or anybody who wants to be one, male or female.

My mum was actually training to be a nursery teacher before she had me.

And educating young children is an important job, and I imagine an extremely difficult, job.

In fact, that is another point I want to raise about this comment.

Although a person with BPD who is well should not be prevented from becoming a nursery teacher because they have BPD, and I am sure many people with this illness do the job perfectly well, and to say otherwise would be disability discrimination, expecting that I should be able to a job like this when I have made it clear that I am disabled is also discrimination, because it ignores that I am severely impaired in the ways that I personally am severely impaired.

Stress has been the reason for every suicide attempt I have even begun to make, I and personally think it would be stressful to have one child of your own who is nursery ages.

Being responsible for somebody else’s very young child, never mind a group of them, must be incredibly stressful.

And that’s not even taking into consideration noise and dirt/germs are huge triggers for me personally. In my experience, young children can be loud and messy.

Then there is the issue of the assumption that I am incapable of making decisions about my own employment or education options. I do wonder whether this is just Phils inferiority complex at work, where he must believe that Torus tenants are inferior to him, because he has such terrible issues with his own self-worth, that he must project that onto everybody else and have it effect their lives in very severe ways.

Again, ill stand by everything I have said here, because it never occurred to Phil that being a nursery teacher would be outside of my financial reach, because I have what the government, not me, classes as a higher level of qualification, which is a bachelor’s degree. This also mean that I’m a qualified specialist in certain things.

If I want to teach, I will take a PGCE, which is actually an option for me financially, as I would be eligible for a student load to do so, this is because as I said, I am a specialist in certain things, and teaching young adults and adults is actually thought of as more important, again by the government not me, to nursery teaching, causes the quite depressing reality that, nobody I know who works in or understands the education system would actually choose to be a nursery teacher over being a teacher, or a college or university tutor.

Again, that’s not me looking down on nursery teachers, I actually think nursery teachers should be paid more and have more career progression opportunities which they don’t. Nursery teachers have a lower highest salary potential than the starting salary for other teaching roles, as well as less opportunities to progress or branch out. This is why, many nursery teachers return to education to become teachers.

If by this point you aren’t convince that Phil is a bigot who shouldn’t be doing a job that puts him in contact with vulnerable people, I hope it has at least convince you he’s not qualified to be suggesting education and/or employment options, never mind telling people what qualifications and jobs they should be pursuing, which is what I felt like he was doing.

And honestly, I don’t think anyone at Torus is probably qualified to be doing this, but I think they all believe they are.