After the suicide of a long-term teacher, the classmates look for an explanation: a special commission is being created

A well-known teacher committed suicide in one of the rural schools in the Biržai district, which did not remain a department after the reform. He was 48 years old.

“It just came to our notice then. We can’t accept this idea yet,” said Loreta Žibelienė, director of the LNK school department.

The teacher worked a week at her school this year, suddenly giving up the extra load offered in the city.

“She changed her mind and refused to work. Although we were very much in agreement at the beginning, we were very happy to come to us, ”said Vaidutė Slavinskienė, deputy principal of the basic school, at LNK.

The teacher worked in the rural school for 13 years, claiming to be a strong specialist and a strong person.

“We are trying to find reasons, to see what the signs were. We remember one thing or another, ”said L. Žibelienė, head of the school department.

Colleagues are trying to understand whether the teacher could not bear the difficult remote work or whether the rural school lost its status after the reform and remained a department. Perhaps there were other stresses besides work.

“Still, each school has its own internal order. We had a hard time adapting to the internal order of another school. And urban schools, we are rural schools, ”said L. Žibelienė.

When the pedagogical community in the district was surprised by such an event for the first time, the Biržai government reacted with a thunderbolt and formed a special commission.

“It just came to our knowledge then. We worked hard to understand what happened. I think the essential objective of that commission is to try to find out if the work relationship and the work environment did not influence the choice of a teacher,” said Irutė Varzienė, Director of the Biržai Municipal Administration, at LNK.

Birzai is a small town and there is no place to hide. According to I. Varzienė, many teachers are still painfully experiencing the reform that ended a year ago, which has undermined the status of rural schools and teachers at the same time. Up to 6 rural schools lost their independence and became urban school departments.

“In my head, those difficulties have been doubled in Biržai. Not only a pandemic, but also the loss of the independence of the school, which is a change in status that has crossed people’s minds, in my head, through self-esteem ”, said the director of the administration of the municipality of Biržai.

The special commission says it will try to identify a potentially unhealthy microclimate in other schools in the district and hire a psychologist from the capital.

“Not from our environment (psychologist, aut. P.). Because let’s be fair, not everyone decides to speak up, be open. Because the environment is familiar to us, we communicate with each other. Therefore, the municipality will also add that there would be professional psychologists to provide the necessary assistance. The most important thing is that they love themselves, ”Vytas Jareckas, mayor of Biržai district, told LNK.

So far, the district’s teachers have chosen two different positions: one would like to talk about their emotional mental health or that of the team, the other opposes it.