Q: My principal sends personal family Christmas cards every year. It’s a traditional Merry Christmas card featuring a nice photograph of him with his wife, two young children, two cats and dog, along with a lovely, colorfully decorated tree in the background, and (if I’m being honest) a really cheesy paragraph on the back relaying something cutesy about each of them, pets included. I know I sound judgmental, but I actually have no problem with the card itself. In fact, I send out a similar card myself (minus the cheesiness, of course!). But I send my card to family and friends only. I steer clear of my colleagues. There are a few I do consider real friends, but if I’m not going to order cards for our entire (huge) staff (which would be expensive and feel too personal), then I’m not going to send one to any of my colleagues. My principal, on the other hand, does the opposite. He picks and chooses which colleagues get graced with his card. He sends cards to his administrative team, to a few heads of departments, and to the teachers he just happens to favor. How do I know? His favorite teachers then make a point of taping his card to a wall in their office or tacking them to a bulletin board in their classroom. This . . . irks me. I think they’re gloating and rubbing it in everyone else’s faces that they are the favored ones. They know that not everyone gets a card. Also, the school leader is supposed to unite, not divide everyone. His behavior sends a loud message that only some staff members are visible and worthy of his consideration. If he wants to send a Christmas card, I think he should send it to everyone. I have discussed this with at least 25 or 30 colleagues, and we all agree: This is the kind of morale-crushing behavior that destroys school culture. It’s simply not something a good school leader does, though none of us are going to complain to him about this directly. What do you think? Am I wrong? Or maybe I should ask, are all of us wrong?

 

A: I’m trying to imagine what this principal would think if he knew that dozens of staff members felt slighted that he didn’t send them a holiday card. Or that these same teachers resented colleagues who did receive a card and hung them up only to “gloat about their favored status” — or that a good chunk of the staff is discussing how his holiday cards “destroy school culture.” (Not to mention calling them “cheesy.”) But I’ll get back to that later.

First, let’s break this down. No feelings are wrong. If you’re irked and hurt that you’re not on the principal’s Christmas card list, then that’s how you feel. If you’re annoyed that the teachers who get the card choose to hang them on their walls, you’re entitled to feel that way. I’m going to challenge some of your assumptions, though. You have no way of knowing whether the teachers who receive cards know or even think they’re in a select group. And you have no way of knowing why they choose to put them up on their bulletin boards. Maybe they think the principal would be offended if they didn’t hang them up. Maybe they feel the cards bring holiday cheer to otherwise blah rooms. As for the principal, you have no way of knowing why he sends cards to some people and not others. It could be because he plays favorites, of course, or it could be that he sends cards only to his leadership team, or only to people who send him cards, or only to the people who made a 2008 holiday card list that he hasn’t updated in 14 years. Maybe he doesn’t even mail his own cards or know which staff members receive them.

So instead of answering your question directly, I want to pose a different question. What outcome do you want? Because right now, the only thing you’re getting is riled up (along with riled up colleagues). Yes, you’re getting affirmation from colleagues that you’re right to feel wronged, but I highly doubt that’s going to make you feel better. It might even make you feel worse. Meanwhile, your current approach won’t get you the affirmation you want from your principal or stop other teachers from hanging cards on their walls. I’m wondering if perhaps some staff members perceive that the principal plays favorites in other contexts, and so the cards have assumed outsized significance. In any case, what’s the upside to being right? Dissecting this with colleagues is unproductive, but you have other choices, including telling the principal and/or the teachers how you feel, or choosing to let it go.

Which brings me back to the principal. Telling him that staff members feel slighted may or may not change his behavior. He certainly has the right to decide who he wants on his holiday card list, and he might think you’re overreacting or consider the whole situation overblown and ridiculous. On the other hand, he might conclude that there’s a bigger problem here and it’s worth changing the way he does holiday cards. Perhaps he’d send everyone on the staff an e-card instead or send paper cards to staff members’ homes rather than place them in their school mailboxes. Last, there’s always the possibility that he’d be dismayed to hear that half the staff is complaining about not getting a card and decide to stop sending any at all.

 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Phyllis L. Fagell

Phyllis L. Fagell is the school counselor at Landon School in Washington, D.C., a therapist at the Chrysalis Group in Bethesda, Md., and the author of the Career Confidential blog. She is also the author of Middle School Matters and Middle School Superpowers, available at https://amzn.to/3Pw0pcu.