Written almost two years ago: Little has changed and in fact, with the attention on standardizing teacher evaluations, now is much worse.  Just a quick google search of "Bill Gates" and "teachers' evaluations" will yield many hits. Googling "Bill Gates and "administrators' evaluations" yields little of substance.

Maybe I need to re-title this piece from two years ago and call it "Open letter to Mr. Bill Gates."

Here's the piece:

Open letter to our nation's school district superintendents:

Is it possible, Mr. and Ms. Superintendents,  that you simply are not aware of the abusive, arbitrary, capricious--sinful, really--bullying administration going on in many of your schools?  

I awoke this morning with two more emails from two more hurt, shaken, terrorized teachers; teachers targeted by bullying principals. These two emails come from Georgia and Michigan. One teacher doesn't have a job now and the other is freaked out about returning. That makes twenty emails from around the nation.  I don't know much about statistics really, but I do know that each of those twenty emails represents maybe 100 more emails from 100 more people. That would be about 2,000 hurt, shaken and terrorized people.  These are people who found me because I simply invited them to contact me.

Mr. and Ms. Superintendents, I can no longer play with words.  I've danced around, beside, close up, and far away from the "bullying principals elephant" that is in our districts' school houses. I am tired of pretending the elephant doesn't exist.  It does.  It sits there as teachers and counselors two step around it.   Every now and again there will be an innocent--maybe new to the schoolhouses--counselor or teacher who stops and says, "Hey everybody there is a fat, stinky elephant right here in the middle of everything.  Let's tie a rope around it's neck and lead it back to the zoo."

The other dancing teachers and counselors will stop for a moment; not to contemplate the guileless request, but to shush the counselor or the teacher-warn him or her to just keep dancing.  "Squeeze your dancing body close, close, close to the wall like us," they might say.  "Slide right around that lethargic unpleasant beast!  We are warning you!  Others have tried.  They pushed and prodded the elephant until it, itself, arose and plodded off to the zoo.  But only temporarily; for it returned to the zoo to whine and complain about the ill treatment its caretakers at its school were giving it.  It wanted more than buckets of water and hay, for goodness sakes!  It wanted stories read to it!  It wanted hot water bottles for its cold feet, fans on hot days.  It wanted fine garments sewn for it when the newspapers came 'round. 

The zoo keeper brought it back.  The zoo keeper was mad.  Instead of looking at the elephant and saying," Elephant, the way you will really impress me; the way you will really shine, is to stop being a demanding, spiteful, lying and cheating beast.  The other animals at your schoolhouse, the gazelles and the parrots; the hippos and the lions (there are a few in spite of your taking up so much of the space); the snakes and the spiders too (even though they probably will never learn to do anything other than slither and weave webs, because they are, after all, snakes and spiders) needed you to change your ways. The other animals needed you to say something like, "I'm sorry, other animals.  I apologize for polluting our space.  I am remorseful that you've had to clean up my stinking messes; that instead of paper and pencils, I provided each of you with a shovel to clean up my messes..."  

No, the zoo keeper did not say that.  Instead the zoo keeper said, "WHAT?!"  Lock out the gazelles and the parrots and the hippos and most especially the lions!  BRING THEM ALL TO ME!  But leave the snakes and the spiders.  They slither and they weave....AND THAT'S WHAT WE WANT FOR OUR CHILDREN!  You've done a good job, elephant.  There is no other school in my zoo district with better slitherers and weavers than yours.  You should be a zoo keeper.  I will help you become a zoo keeper like me! "

Here is the truth, Mr. and Ms. Superintendents, here it is.  You have an epidemic of bullying, power hungry principals leading your schools.  You have a problem of such enormous size--the size of a herd of sleeping elephants--that unless you say to that herd, "No more.  I will listen to the voices of counselors and teachers; of gazelles, hippos, parrots and most especially lions.  I will not tolerate your bullying ways.  Our children deserve to be educated in places of truth, courage and justice; not places of fear and terror."

Unless you say something like that, the bullying herd will wake up and stampede straight to the zoo, for that is where they feel most safe, with you--of that I am certain.  You must stop keeping them safe, dear Mr. and Ms. Superintendent.  You must--and this will take courage on you part--admit they stink.  Pull out the hose.  Hose them off.

Teachers and counselors across the nation are fed up with pretending the elephants you've placed in their school houses are not fat and stinking.  Teachers and counselors are beginning to prod and poke at the elephants.  

Dear Mr. and Ms. Superintendents, it's time to clean up.

I'm worried that I worry too much.  

I got up today with a gritty determination.  I was determined not to worry--"It's pointless," I said to myself.  After a brief second of groggy "empty-headedness," though, the worries flooded in.  The first worry "in" was precipitated by my daughter's sleeping sigh.  She'd slept with me and the "smack-smack-smack" of her lips and the air exhaled from her 14 year old lungs as she slumbered did not fill me with smiles and love.  The first penetrating worry was: "Did she finish the math homework?"  It was followed immediately by my own exasperated guilt at not having stuck with another repetition of her vocabulary words and definitions for her Language Arts test.