My Art Teacher Stole My Idea for Our Big Project

So there I was, this starving artist trying to make a name for myself. You know the drill, always hustling, looking for that big break. I'm enrolled in these evening classes at the community college to keep my skills sharp and network with other artists. The instructor is Ms. Henderson, who's pretty well-known around town as an up-and-coming abstract painter. Anyway, she assigns this big project where we need to come up with a concept for a mural that would be installed in the new public library downtown. I was super excited because it could mean exposure and maybe even a commission if they liked my work enough. I spent weeks brainstorming ideas. Finally came up with this really cool concept inspired by old library card catalogs, these giant, colorful metal racks full of cards with book titles on them. I imagined creating an entire wall mural in the same style but with books and stories from all over the world represented in different languages and scripts. It was going to be so unique. Then came critique day. I presented my idea first because alphabetically it worked out that way. The room went silent for a moment, then Ms. Henderson asked me how I'd feel about her working on this mural project herself. WHAT? She thought the idea was original when she saw mine but just had to go and steal it. Needless to say, the rest of critique day felt pretty awkward since everyone now knew what happened. So yeah, that's my confession, my big art project idea got swiped by my teacher. I'm not exactly sure how to move forward without burning bridges (I still need her recommendation for grad school), but man, it sure stinks when you put in all this work and someone takes the credit.