Energy Solutions would even reject this…

Life lesson #1654-53A

Do not email someone out of the blue a decade after the last time you talked to them, call them spineless, wimp, gutless, question their sexuality, refer to them and an old friend of theirs as “a couple of old queers”, tell them their family hates them and generally berate them for something that happened over a decade ago, and then claim you harbor them no resentment.

I brought payroll down to the pizza place I’ve been involved with since right out of high school.  The owner, a friend of mine for over 20 years, told me of some contact he just had with a couple we all knew that he had fired from the business back in 1999.  I read the correspondence back and forth between them and walked out of the office with my mind reeling.  I won’t go into details, that’s not what this post is for, I just need to purge my brain.   I will say that I came out in a state of mind where I started giving this grown man advice like he was one of my 8th graders.  He didn’t need it, it was apparent from his last response that he knows the best thing to do is not even acknowledge it any further, but I had already slipped into teacher mode.

I call them toxic people.  I’ve been dealing with a few since the  beginning of this school year, and sincerely hope that I will let go of any resentment as soon as I’m out of the situation.  It was the same at the first school I taught at, which is one of the reasons I left.  Almost always negative, harping on things they cannot change, or changes their job requires them to make.  Every new idea that comes down the pike is “just another fad that will fade away when the next one comes along.”  Granted, especially in Education, there are tons of things that come down the pike that simply fade away, some because they were tried and failed, some because they never should have been tried.  But I’ve seen these people not only refuse to look into the new ideas, but fight even the ones the majority of the faculty have looked at and find interesting and promising. 

I’ve worked in 3 schools where these people  were the almost non-existent, silent minority.  Now, I’ve worked in 2 schools where they weren’t all that silent and, although still a minority, not-so-much non-existent.  Here’s to 59 more days of school, and blue skies in the future.