Communication Disorder
When the teachers need to be educated, and the management needs to be managed.
This hub is about trust. It is about workplace collegiality and cooperation. It is about competent, consistent and clear management. It is about working together to achieve a common goal and serve a ver special population. It is about what it takes to care for each other as workers, supervisors, subordinates, and ultimately fellow nurturers, as well as we care for those we serve.
Actually, no. This hub is about a lack of all of the above.
There are times in our worklives where we come upon obstacles, friction, and hard times. That is understandable. We all have experienced that colleague we just "don't get" or "can't stand", or that boss who "has no clue what it takes to get 'er done in the trenches". It is practically a cultural norm since the dawn of the industrial age. How many times, in real life and on the silver screen, have we observed or partaken in having a beer at the bar and bitch about the boss?
I ain't-uh talkin' about that. These fall within the range of social norms. I'm about to talk about a problem, not at all rare, but in some cases chronic, acute, and in ever rarer but nonetheless critical circumstances, devastating.
I know that we are in the age of icons, soundbites, and "OMG", but this is not by any means a phenomenon of modernity and our ever wired and constantly buzzing world.
This goes back to the times of secretaries getting condescending slaps on the ass as an "affectionate" "thanks, babe" by the cigar chomping boss as he proceeds to belch out "get me a cream with two sugars, wouldja darlin'?".
Thank you Anita Hill, and thank you to what is, hopefully, at least in part, the product of modernity - that of the normalization of respect, compasion and equality - and the near extinction of the above described disgusting display of chauvinistic, fat-headed arrogance.
I think we can also find some comfort and hope in the erosion of other prejudices and bigotry. The whipping post is today but a reference and/or metaphor in bellowed melodic cry out delivered with poignant sting from the Allman Brothers. We do have an African-American, a black man, in the white house. That's not the end of the change. It's the beginning. But it is hope and it is damned solid evidence that our knuckles have begun to lift from the ground.
Where there is still much and major work to be done is in the rights and understanding of the disabled, especially those with cognitive, affective, executive, visual-spacial, and other processing deficits. We as a society, and expecially as a workforce, have a hell of a long way to go before we have even begun to adequately support, address and meet the needs of, and respect the dignity and absolute equality of those with "the invisible disabilities".
When a person can get fired by breach of contractual promise of reinstatement, because of some mysterious, ambiguous, and UNREVEALED (gaffe?, incompetence?, negligence?, or "failure to respond quickly" to a sudden NON-crisis - even when said improvisational respondability is a DEFINITIVE aspect of his disclosed disabilities, we ain't there yet.
When said former employee can then rightfully bemoan this from the (virtual) rooftop, only to find a criminal complaint of harassment in his mailbox for said 1rst Amendment indulgence, even as said conduct, if indeed illegal or otherwise improper, would have resulted in the termination of the account from which he raised his voice, did NOT result in said termination, and which fact is prima facie evidence of the LACK of any breach, something is seriously wrong.
When it is learned that said action was taken, against this formally loyal, dedicated, loving, VERY VERY VERY diligent employee, for fear that, oh my stars!, he intends to right the wrong by means of litigation and other tools of the judicial system (and the free press!!), and so to try to diminish his rock solid credibility and literal honesty (arrive at 8:22am - 22min late - sign that exact time - every time! - even as he has witnessed professional staff fudge said sign-in time!), then it it time to rise up, raise your and our voices, and fix things.
It IS time for change!
