Stay Out of The Faculty Room: A Cesspool of Virulent Negativity
By Jill Jenkins
Poisonous
people are lurking in the staff room spreading negativity, seeking the alliance
of others and turning the staff room into a virulent cesspool of negativity.
Such people can destroy the morale at a school, render TLC’s inoperative and
destroy the self-esteem of developing young minds. How do they operate? Their negativity spreads
like a virus through the school beginning with a simple whine that a particular
student is incorrigible and an attempt to cajole others into justifying their
prognosis by agreeing. Armed with
allies, the virulent teachers stop searching for new perspectives and
techniques for helping the struggling child.
Worse yet, the teacher never considers that he/she owns the
problem. To help the child, the teacher
must change what he or she is doing. The
problem has no hope of being resolved.
Once
this virus is released in a faculty room, it continues to multiply. Other members of the faculty begin to avoid
responsible collaborative attempts to share positive solutions to troubling
classroom behavior by whining to each other.
The shared alliance of whining is destructive to students with learning
handicaps, emotional issues and irascible dispositions. Not only will the
challenges associated with their unique learning styles be ignored, the teacher
now armed with allies may feel empowered to mistreat them or ask for the
student’s removal from their classroom.
Students are very perceptive to teachers’ emotions. If a teacher does not sincerely desire a
student to do well and care that that student succeeds, the student will know
and act accordingly. If a teacher feels
hostile to a student, he or she will know and reflect that hostility back to
the teacher. Self-fulfilling prophecy is
not a joke. A teacher with a bad
attitude can negatively impact students’ self-esteem and have a long lasting
effect on students’ abilities to succeed.
The
toxic teacher with a hostile attitude can negatively affect the attitudes of
other teachers. These emboldened
teachers may use this new-found power to usurp authority over school policies,
procedures and/or curriculum. Naturally,
not all teachers are going to agree with every policy or procedure in a school
or with every curriculum decision made by a district or state, but most teachers
comply and do whatever it takes to make successful implementation; however, the
toxic teacher not only becomes mavericks who refuse to implement policy or
curriculum changes, but encourage others to join their mutiny. Some conveniently miss meeting so they can
fane ignorance. Others arrogantly refuse
to implement chances and announce their insubordination vociferously.
Regardless of the tactic, the results are the same: they are the weakest
link. As an administrator this behavior
needs to be addressed directly if it is going to be curtailed and quickly
before it spreads. If it is not
curtailed, their employment must be terminated before it become viral.
Poisonous people are everywhere: your family, your community and your work. Avoiding these people can help a teacher maintain a positive outlook. Avoid the staff room and take a walk during lunch. Select your friends from colleagues with positive attitudes. If you are an administrator provide in-service classes on the importance of teamwork and positive attitudes. One book that you might want your faculty to read is Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box by which discusses making decisions when you are not in the box. Discussions or even in-service classes offered by this organization might improve teachers' attitudes and productivity. If you have a poison person in your staff, document his/her behavior, and address the matter directly with the individual and quickly before their attitude spreads. . Nevertheless, if they don’t acquiesce, termination could prevent a mutiny.