Generalizations ands cliches often carry an element of truth. The same can be said of "self-fulfilling prophecies," which are usually negative and, when linked to lack of confidence in the good-faith of the Department of Education, frequently provoked.

"Self-fulfilling prophecies" can come true just through the magical and sometimes unhelpful power of belief. An unbroken pattern of bitter experience, haunting regrets and stifled hopes may cause us to expect the worst outcome, regardless of our own efforts. It's as though no agent of change will matter and nothing can deliver improvement. Veteran educators may feel especially jaded as they recall the days when the Department of Education was content not to constantly play their adversary.

This view is natural and no fault of educators, regardless of where they work or who they are. But from a sense of frustration with the DOE may come a new danger to ourselves: that we needlessly give up because we fear and expect bad treatment and submit to this mindset because we have
subconsciously set up a "firewall" that may block other options for solution from being discovered and prospering.

This may happen with out our realizing it. We educators don't choose to believe that our employer is "out to get us" on every issue. If we surrendered to that attitude we'd be conspirators in our own victimhood. We are not victims. We are strong and united and effective.

Well, the DOE has in recent years sorely tested the resistance of reasonable people to despair. The have made it easy, some say inevitable, for educators, parents and the general community to be prophets of doom. But standing mentally still so that doubt can find you is like opening your arms to it. Even when the landscape of DOE operations is fertile ground for "burnout," it is groundless to be resigned to it. Even when cynicism is lucid and based on plain reality, it cannot take us where we need to go.

And let's have the courage to emphasize the countless reasons we have to luxuriate in our finest of professions.

Every new school year is potentially the beginning of a new era. Let's wipe our slates of doubt clean to the extent we safely can as we know with whom we are dealing and prepare long before the awaited sunset of 2009 for a new "self-fulfilling prophecy" of optimism and triumph.

Published September 3, 2008