Good for her... how dare a student call a school official at his/her home number!! Do you call your family physician at home when you want a precription or are wondering why you can't get an appointment of your choice? NO!! That student was in the wrong.. and from the sound of it, the wife has fielded more than one call from students.
Okay, maybe she shouldn't have left that on voice mail, because a teenager with a computer and a grudge can make you look really bad really quick. And um, maybe....just maybe having a listed number wasn't the best idea. However, what the heck were those kids thinking????? What did they honestly think they were going to do? Bully him into giving a snow day for only three inches of snow? Shesh.....can we say sense of entitlement?
I don't know.... I get a sort of cringy feeling when I hear the message. Presumably the wife is an adult, so I wonder what's in it for her to leave hateful voice messages on a kid's phone. I know that I sure didn't appreciate the part where the wife said that her husband spends a lot of times going to meetings about "snotty-nose little brats"... is her feeling about the kids in the district shared by her husband? She should have just ignored the call and made plans to have her number changed to unlisted.
From her response, it sounds like the kid left a pretty rude message himself. Doesn't matter, that is not news. Which explains why it's BBC World News or NPR around here.
I don't actually think that this particular story is considered "breaking news" by CNN. That seems to just be their attention-getter, and it's the title of every news story you watch or click on.
I agree with you! Hit delete and move on or let your husband deal with it! She showed bad judgement, just like the kid who called.
She probably had ignored the calls for the last so many years (100s of calls). And was at her wits end. I've been mad and called my bf a name or my sister, brother, parents. But I don't really feel that way about them. Maybe she did that to when calling the kids snotty nosed brats.
It doesn't matter how many years she has been dealing with it. It lowered her to the level of the callers. For YEARS, my dad held a public office position in which he would get a lot of angry phone calls from people. I remember often getting calls during our supper hour, etc. He handled it professionally or dismissed it when necessary. I can't imagine my mom EVER getting on the phone to let someone have it. It just wouldn't have happened. She looks very foolish and immature. When you are married to someone in a public position, you need to grow thick skin, or else it will drive you mad. Apparently that is what happened to this woman!:lol: It wasn't her place to deal with this. It was her husbands.
I have no informed opinion until I've heard the kid's message. It may well be that he deserved a kick in the pants and got just what he deserved. As for her tone. . . there's such a thing as being driven to it. But no matter what, this kid is a whiny entitled brat who was totally over the line when he took it upon himself to complain about having to get up and go to school when there were only a couple of inches of snow on the ground. I'm sure this kid and his friends managed to make it to the mall that day in spite of the weather. Nope, no sympathy for the kid here. And probably not even after I've heard HIS message. Maybe even, LESS!
I'm not sure what message the kid left but...her being the adult...she should know better than to leave a message like that. An upset parent and well, now the world... She should have just moved on and wait...here's a thought...don't have an unlisted number when your husband is the superintendent (or whatever he is).
We've all been upset...and did things we regretted. This is a prime example of counting to 10...or maybe 100 With today's technology...the lesson learned is never leave a message, send an email, etc... that you don't want published all over the place. Just my (at the discount rate!)
I've got to wonder about what led up to that. I'm sure there was something to trigger the "flip out point" . . . because she certainly did flip out. My husband is normally quite quiet and laid back, but he flipped out when an aide at our school called me at 10:00PM on the day I was released from the hospital after 12 days fighting a near-fatal illness to get me to tell her why her son had a 93 instead of a 100 on his report card! I hadn't even been at school for 20-something days, and school had been the last thing on my mind. At least DH wasn't a raving lunatic, and we didn't end up on the news. LOL
What annoys me about this story is that people act as though she was ignorant to have her phone number listed. That's comparable to...I don't know, saying "Well, if you would have parked your car in the garage instead of your driveway it wouldn't have been broken into." Does that make sense? She should be able to list her phone number. I think this kid is an absolute jerk...making the facebook page with the educator's email address and phone number. Ugh.
What would have happened if a teacher had spoken that way to a student? Teenager or not, this is totally inappropriate behavior (calling about not getting a snow day) but the worse behavior was how the woman handled it. Why not change your number and have it unlisted long before you ever got this far? Why not use a caller ID to screen unwated calls? Why not phone the child's parents and tell them what's going on and why it is causing a problem for her and her husband? The whole angry message (especially the "snotty little brats" comment sent shivers through me. I'd have been fired in a heart beat. And she just "learned a lesson"?
This happened in the district where I teach (I teach in Fairfax County, VA) Although I definetely thought that they should closed early (it was awful and took me 3 hours to get home..) I still don't think that that student should have called the administrator's house. However..our local radio station played the entire voicemail and I can't believe she said that to the student!! They interviewed him and I seriously have my doubts that he was rude. I'm sure he could have been lying about the message that he left, but he seemed truthful. I think the wife overreacted a bit...you can't do that when dealing with students. In her position as an admin.'s wife she needs to think things through first.
Dean Tistadt's Wife: Honey, some kid called about the snow today but I took care of it. Dean Tistadt: Thanks dear. I appreciate your help. Dean Tistadt's Wife: No problem sweetheart. I'm always here for you.
She also doesn't work with kids. So it is kind of hard to fire her. Some people don't do well with kids that is why they don't work with them. She apparently is one of those people.
I guess I should have watched my own thread more closely. Too much family stuff going on last night to see what was going on here. I kind of thought this would be ignored. Little did I know... From what I got she had been receiving messages from various people and this just triggered her. I like how she called the kids snotty-nosed. She definitely went too far. But, like many have said, I would like to hear his message.
UPDATE: The boy who left the message wishes the attention would go away. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2008/01/24/delacruz.snow.day.call.cnn
You know, there's a message left on utube, I think...someone says something to the effect of: Kids are supposed to do stupid stuff, but we expect adults to have more composure, common sense and control. I think I agree completely with that. This lady's husband is in the public eye. Like it or not...so are we. I think that means that to a certain degree we are held to a higher standard. This is a powerful lesson about how potent words are. Once spoken, they can never be returned. Better to think twice - speak once.
Back in July or August, I called the MD rep for Zaner Bloser Spelling. He had given me his home number some time before, during a call about one of their reading programs. I called him this particular day last summer, and his wife was not happy. Although she wasn't rude or anything, you could tell she didn't appreciate a female calling for her husband. When he finally called back- three months later-he seemed nonchalant when I told him how she acted. This was after I laid him out for taking three months to call me back. He said she had just given him the message.
:soapbox: Someplace along the line, I think we've lost sight of courtesy and manners. Even when we feel we've been wronged. Now that's old-fashioned, but...I think if modeled that for kids more...maybe we wouldn't have as many issues as we have.
Our local news (I teach in the district) just said that the student received a Saturday detention for his behavior.
Awww, the poor little boy's self esteem must be at a new low. Shame on the mean people who made him see himself as the world sees him. He's just a CHILD who wanted a SNOW DAY so he could sleep in and play instead of going to school and being forced to WORK and BE PRODUCTIVE. Bless his naive little heart, him's just a baby boy who didn't know no better. Hahahahahahahaha. . . what an idiot.
And still this lady gets off with...what exactly? She's lucky she hasn't been brought up on some sort of verbal assault charge. What the kid did was wrong. What the adult did was worse? Who's teaching what to whom here?
And I'd like to add that I cringe when I hear adults(especially teachers) refer to children of any age as snot nosed brats or idiots. We are supposed to be the adults and to hear teachers call children names is just plain wrong.
