I'm Done with the Negative Ads!

It's election time so that means everyone hates each other.  I'm not a Trump supporter but it amazes me how many of my Facebook friends are so I avoid those posts.  Once its all said and done the internet can be fun again.  Besides, we have the awesome television commercials to depress us every day during every show we watch.  It's like this every election cycle but we power through it and get to the point where the elected officials don't act like they care about us anymore.

I'm numb to this nonsense.  I actually have a good working knowledge of election politics so much of the behavior is expected.  This time around, however, I have a real problem with the local races for the Illinois General Assembly.  The fight is on to unseat incumbent democrats and a whole lot of money is being spent to feed us negative ads with far fetched story lines.  I am not concerned about the incumbents, I am concerned about the newcomers to the scene.  To be fair, the incumbents should be running on their records and accomplishments.  Voters respond to experience and research has shown that negative ads do not motivate people to vote.  Instead everyone went negative with their ads almost immediately.

Despite being a Democrat, I can say that nobody is playing nice or even smart.  The Southern said it appropriately that the negative ads are scare tactics and do personal damage to the candidates.  One negatively ran race in particular has rubbed me the wrong way.  When Terri Bryant originally ran for the State House she was interviewed for an endorsement by the Alliance.  This is a group made up of the education advocacy groups.  I was fortunate enough to get to help interview the candidates and recommend an endorsement.  She did a very nice job on the issues for a newcomer.  Her opponent was not kind to her in his interview and it was quite off putting.  She was given the endorsement and a campaign donation based on her likely support of education issues.

Fast forward two years later.  Rep. Bryant is running against a newcomer with no legislative record, just as she was.  Marsha Griffin is a school teacher new to politics and she has been painted as reckless and unfit to hold the seat.  The newest ad run by Bryant points out that she was teaching on a lapsed teaching license and that she is missing work to campaign.  Maybe Rep. Bryant could be working on the licensing issues teachers have had seems how she has taken money from an education group.  This is the weakest tactic I've seen by incumbents ever.  They should run on their records and challenge their opponents based on their lack of knowledge of the issues or experience handling them.  If you had met Rep. Bryant two years ago, you would have seen the same inexperience.  Another similarity between the candidates, they are both heavily supported by their parties to not lose the seat.  Running out of desperation leads to negative campaign tactics that do nothing to inform voters.  Or maybe Rep. Bryant's record is not worth campaigning on.  Bobcat hunting just doesn't take care of itself you know.

I do not know Marsha Griffin and obviously I will always rise to respond to attacks on a teacher.  Thanks to the campaigning that has taken place, I will not get to know her or her platform.  The strategy is now to fight fire with fire leaving only destruction.  The same goes for the other races in this election.  The newcomers have been painted as bad as those who have sent them campaign cash and we are supposed to equate them with their donors.  I say check to see who is donating to who.  You might be surprised.  Thankfully, I will not be voting in the 115th so I am no threat to that election.

Folks, do your homework on your candidates.  No one is playing fair so its up to us to sift through the BS.  I don't have clever advice or any direction with this but hey, it doesn't look like you have to these days.

O'Doyle Rules!

October is Bullying Prevention Month and Principal's Appreciation Month so I thought I would kill two birds with one stone.  One, I would like to clearly define bullying for parents and two, you have to indulge me as I ramble because I happen to be a principal.

I am in no way making light of bullying with this post.  I think students and parents need to be better educated on the true definition of bullying before we start throwing the word around.  Before you call the office and allege bullying against another, I would like you to consider what I call the O'Doyle Rules.

The researched and accepted definition for bullying is aggressive behavior that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power. Most often, it is repeated over time.  The key element here is is the notion of a power imbalance.  I get tons of phone calls from parents asking me to look into bullying and it takes a lot of time to follow up.  Most of these scenarios end up being social conflicts in which the students involved do not have the skills to overcome.  Last week it was two former BFF's fighting over a boy.  The more they argued the worse it got and when it hit social media, the parents got involved.  Both side alleged bullying.  That is the problem.  They can't both be bullies and victims.

Bullies do not have extended, complex relationships with their victims.  Take the O'Doyles for example.  Billy Madison in the clip (and throughout the movie) was targeted by O'Doyle so dominance could be asserted.  They were not best buds goofing off and it got out of hand (I get that one a lot too), there is a clear showing of power.  This makes investigating a bullying situation easy.  If no relationship exists, I do not have to learn every back story and line up conflicting electronic messages that neither side wants the principal to see.  That, my friends, is an argument that needs mediation and the increased frequency of this shows that we just are not teaching our kids how to deal with people.

In the past six years I have been in my current school, we have had four true bullies by definition.  All ended up in alternative school because it is easy to determine that they sought to exploit people and to dominate them.  If I sent every student that a parent convicts as a bully to alternative school, the student body would be cut in half.  It is critical that we understand bullying and stop making victims out of our kids.

Parents and students take a few steps back before you call the principal and use the word bully.  Can you confidently say that this kid is an O'Doyle?  95% of the time the answer will be no.  Collect information from your kids and actually discuss the situation with them.  All too often I get emotional parents that are not thinking of their child's future emotional health.  I also often get parents that want to use me as their avenue for revenge.  This is totally not fair to me or the other family not to mention that it can be bullying behavior by the parents.

Use the O'Doyle Rules for deciding whether or not you have a bullying situation.  Is this a conflict that the kids just need guidance with? Is there a power imbalance?  You should be able to answer those questions before you call the principal.