When you start out in the business world if you are lucky you are taken aside by a mentor and told who you should watch out for. Most people, including yours truly, do not get this benefit and have been thrown to the wolves a couple of times in their career by people looking out only for themselves. I had several run ins with people that would be nice to you one minute and throw you under the bus the next. I even worked for a vice president of a company that got his position because of just that. These people are ladder climbers. They do whatever they can to reach the next level without regard for the people that they step on. Hollywood has done a great job showing them off as villains, and you can bet that there were some of these on the Titanic pushing people aside as they boarded the life boats. I thought that education would be different. Because a teacher is dedicated to the student, and to education, I felt that this profession would be devoid of those that are blinded by their own ambition. This sadly was not the case.
I decided to write this due to a good friend of mine that learned this the hard way. She is in her second year of teaching, much like me, but without the benefit of working in the corporate sector. She has been sheltered for a while from the unpleasantness of people like that. The administration has been asking questions this whole about why teachers in my section were negative. They were citing things that had been said to a group of people, supposedly in confidence. It seemed to the group like there was a mole turning innocent venting into a anti-administration stance. This was brought several times and at several people's evaluations as well. The result of this cast suspicions on everyone and really caused people to feel as if they had been sold out. The result of this has been an even lower morale at school, and the feeling that the group of people that sit in the lounge are being sold out for gain. What really compounds the issue, and where my friend comes into the story is recently. She has been a voice of positivity for the group, and has gone out of her way to make things better. Another person in the group has taken several of us aside, and told us not to associate with others as they are "sketchy individuals." This person then goes on to tell my friend that she has been the reason for the negativity and for the clique nature of the group. She has been in several meetings and told others personal things about close friends of hers. This person has helped to fracture a group and used it to her own gain. The thing that kills me is that she gets mad, or get upset when she is not included in activities that the group does. She is by definition a ladder climber. She has thrown people under the bus, and has even gone so far as to tell others in the building little lies about activities to try and gain for herself a better position as a teacher. It is stuff like this that infuriates me. I really try to make sure that I further myself in my career, but not at the expense of others. This is a lesson that I feel teachers should exemplify, and in some ways we have fallen short of. As we close this year out, I see that the corporate world and that of the teaching profession are closer than I thought.
Sorry to be on the soap box today, but it is important that we really look at how the corporate world and the teaching profession is different. This one example of where they are the same, but tomorrow we will take a look back at the year, and then Thursday for my final article of the school year we will look at some news that effects education and how people will be educated in the year to come. As a side not after Thursday the Blog is going to change formats just a little. I am going to write once a week instead of every day. These first few weeks of summer will be really busy for me. Look for the blog to be updated every Monday with my take on enws and I will post links throughout the week on interesting stuff happening in education.
Until Tomorrow,
Why should society feel responsible only for the education of children, and not for the education of all adults of every age? ~Erich Fromm
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