Today I am grateful for a long teaching career that gives me the experience to know how to cope, and advise other, younger teachers who got pretty scared today. We have an angry parent. Well, not just angry. We have a mother who appears to be mentally ill and currently experiencing an episode that is putting her out of touch with reality. She has been escalating for about a week now. Her emails and texts today were full of threats and vitriol none of my colleagues have experienced before. They were pretty shaken. Teachers are a deeply caring tribe. They immediately began wondering what they'd done wrong. They needed someone to put this into perspective for them--this woman is out of touch with reality; you have done nothing wrong. Unfortunately our administration is, shall I say, out of touch. So, these young teachers' first instinct was to engage with the parent and write miles of texts explaining how they'd done nothing wrong. I coached them to disengage. We need the legal team involved at this point; not young flustered teachers. It was one of those moments where I felt my gray hairs and was grateful for them. Disengage. Deescalate. Document, document, document and then kick this matter upstairs as fast as possible.

These are unbelievably scary times. The internet has enabled anyone to say anything. People will believe anything they hear without an ounce of proof. In the wrong hands, on the wrong website, a teacher's reputation could be forever linked to a scandal and then completely destroyed.

This woman's specific threat was to "bring a media circus to your front lawn". (Note: the thing she was mad about was that the math teacher took 48 hrs to grade an assignment instead of 24. It's such a weird thing to be mad about no one even took it seriously at first.) But, from there her threats got more personal and scary. And I kept thinking about that media circus threat. She is exactly the kind of off-kilter whackadoodle who'd believe every conspiracy theory out there. That's probably all the media she consumes. Who knows what groups she's already a part of. The last thing I need is for her to get my address (easily done with a Google search of my last name) and then tell some group that I'm a child abuser or whatever else she could think of. We work for an online school. I've never even been in the same room as her child, but truth is irrelevant in situations like this.

So, we'll see. Why is the world so full of hate? We are watching the destruction of people's lives as if it were entertainment. Our world is sick. Literally.