Narrow

Before I became a teacher, I had to interview for the job. To ease my OCD tendencies, I logged on to a very early form of Al Gore's Internet and searched for the school at which I hoped to become part of the staff: Horace Mann. At least that's what I put into the search box. When I was rewarded with several thousand responses, I realized that I had failed the first rule of web searches: narrow. Of course, at the time I was unaware that Horace Mann was the father of public education, as well as the namesake of at least one institutional learning facility in every major metropolitan area in these United States. I wanted the one in Oakland. Not the county in Michigan. The city in California.
Once that was all settled and clear, I was able to make my way without incident to the interview where, after fifteen years, I believe that it must have been some sort of success. Over the course of those years I have become increasingly involved with the inner workings of the school, from committee work to serving as the webmaster for our school's web page. That means that I try and keep the information on our site relatively current, provide links to educational resources for teachers, parents and kids, and on occasion answer an e-mail that lands in our in-box. Usually these are former students who discover us after a year or twenty or more and want to share their memories with us.
That's what I thought I was opening when I started my day with a check of the mail. It came from a very upset professional type who asserted that all the teachers and administrators should be let go for the treatment of one particular child. I was surprised by the angry tone, mostly because I had no knowledge of any incidents outside of our usual playground frustrations. Happily these days, we deal primarily in hurt feelings and bruised egos. I didn't think much of it until later in the day I received two more angry messages from the interwebs, and then another just after lunch. One of them made reference to New Jersey, and suddenly the door opened wide: They wanted the Horace Mann in Cherry Hill. That's where a pair of teachers had recently been fired for verbally abusing an autistic child. I did my best to try and reroute the frustrations of the concerned citizens wishing to vent their feelings on this matter, but since most of them used pretend e-mail accounts, there was no way to get their concerns to the right place. For those I was able to send along, I let them know that as an educator and a parent, I shared their outrage.
I also hope that they will be more specific in their use of Google from now on.