The Power Of Consistency

8. Speak well of others I’ve been in education for forty five years. I have been in seven different school systems as a teacher and as an administrator. In each district I discovered the pain that rumors and gossip can cause others. A rumor is starting a story based upon a half truth or no truth. It just starts based upon what someone sees or hears and they draw a conclusion that to them just seems logical. This logical conclusion is usually a witch hunt and the person who starts the rumor is looking for evidence to support their belief about someone or something. If it is someone the motive is revenge, if it is something the motive is usually pride or arrogance as they seek to prove a point based upon the failure of a system, a political party, or a religious belief; kind of like a see I told you so.

Gossip on the other hand is the spread of information about someone’s behavior of which the end result has nothing to do with those that are doing the gossiping. Both are painful and quite frankly immature. In school when kids do this they call it drama. Believe it or not the kids see this as mature because they have observed their parents doing this at the dinner table or even teachers doing this in conversations with other teachers or in the hallway. A faculty room can be a haven for this type of unwanted and negative behavior.

Let’s say you have a piece of wood, a nail, and a hammer.

Pretend the wood is a person, and the nail is a nasty rumor about that person. If you hammer in the nail, you’re obviously hurting him or her. If you then pull out the nail…well, there’s still a hole in the wood, and the damage has been done.

Rumors and Gossip can cause us to make some really bad decisions and bad choices.