Rumour Control

It's been a long time! Teaching has really been overwhelming this year. LOVE the students, HATE what teaching has become. The paperwork required, in the name of "accountability" is ridiculous. I'm all for accountability, but doing paperwork that is unnecessary and which gets in the way of being a more creative, effective teacher makes no sense at all. This is what will finally push me out the door.

I'm actually coming back here, not to complain about my job, but to pose a question. I've been hearing a lot of similar rumours going around about a certain school CEO. I've heard them enough times, from enough credible sources, that I'm truly wondering if they could be more than just rumours. I'm not trying to spread any untruths, just putting the question out there - Is there any truth to...?

Okay, perhaps I should be a bit more specific in my query. Rumour has it that this certain school CEO has had some brushes with the law related to his temper. Domestic-related temper issues that have resulted in police involvement. I went to the trusty Maryland Case Search website, but have found nothing there. I've been told that this could be because our former mayor was trying to keep it on the DL. This made sense, but in Baltimore, also known as Smalltimore, things are not so easily kept quiet. Nowhere on the internet have I found anything about these alleged brushes with the law. Nowhere. I did hear that the question was posed at a recent School Board mtg., but I don't know if this is true. I would wonder why the Baltimore Sun didn't pick up on it, but I believe that they have been complicit in covering up city school stories in the past, so I wouldn't expect them to write about this. So, rumours, rumours and more rumours. Does anyone know the truth. Surely, to take a quote from "The X Files", "The truth is out there." Enlighten me.

UM

Two posts in one day!

I just found myself over on the Sun website, reading some of the reader responses to what's going on in BCPSS. I really need to stay away because my blood pressure soars after reading the racist comments by so many ignoramuses. I've never been exposed to attitudes like that before in my life. I know that bigots abound, but to be confronted with so many of them is so disconcerting. I'd like to believe that our society has evolved since the 1950s and 1960s. I'd like to believe that we have made progress in the way of race relations - after all, we have a black man who could well be our next president.

What hurts me the most is the comments where people refer to our students as "animals" and that they belong in the zoo and that they are all drug dealers. I suspect these comments are made by people who consider themselves to be good Christians, too. They don't understand compassion for others. They don't realize that we are all in this big, scary world together and we need to do whatever we can to make sure our students - all of them - have a fighting chance in this world. Our society depends upon it, our world depends upon it.