The Top 3 Ways to Ward Off Energy Vampires in Schools
Energy vampires in schools are the colleagues who drain a team's motivation through chronic negativity, complaining, or resistance to collaboration. The fix starts before you hire one: screen for teaming red flags in interviews and references, then address the behavior directly if it shows up anyway, using "I" statements and, when needed, your principal's support. If nothing changes, protecting your own energy and your team's culture may mean limiting contact or moving on.
"I want to suck your blood!" said an Energy Vampire.
Jon Gordon's book, The Energy Bus, is absolutely fantastic. I'd wanted to read it for years but hadn't hit the shopping cart button on Amazon until this summer. He lays out 10 rules for fueling your life, work, and team with positive energy. One stuck with me more than when Gordon first wrote it: Rule #6: Post a Sign That Says NO ENERGY VAMPIRES ALLOWED on Your Bus.
Gordon defines an energy vampire as a person who drains your energy. These people will "suck the life out of you and your goals and vision if you let them," he writes.
Here's that idea reframed for educators: three strategies for warding off energy vampires in schools.
What an Energy Vampire Looks Like in a School
Before you can deal with an energy vampire, it helps to know what one looks like on a real team, not just in the abstract. In a school setting, the pattern usually shows up as one or more of the following:
- Chronic complaining in team meetings, regardless of the agenda
- Resistance to collaboration: working well alone but undermining group goals
- Dismissing new ideas before they're discussed, rather than weighing them
- Comparing the current school unfavorably to a past one, on repeat
- A pattern of short tenures across multiple schools or districts
None of these on their own means someone is an energy vampire. Everyone has an off week. What matters is the pattern, and whether it's draining the people around them.
1. Don't Hire Energy Vampires
The number one strategy is to steer clear of energy vampires in the first place. If you're part of the hiring process at your school, be alert to this type of person from the start. That means doing your homework during the hiring process: checking references, using scenario-based interview questions, and asking directly about teaming and collaboration.
Your district likely has a set list of reference-check questions. Follow those, but listen for red flags along the way. A few warning signs worth noting when you check a reference:
- Difficulty teaming or collaborating
- Few examples of the candidate working successfully in a school environment
- Little to no detail in examples of a successful work experience
- Works well independently without support. Independent work is great, but be cautious if it comes at the expense of the team
- A long list of job changes. The more someone moves around, the more questions worth asking about sustainability and teaming. Even a candidate who's positive in the interview may have a side that shows up later
During the interview itself, build in scenario-based questions. These put the candidate in the role of a teacher and force them to answer from real experience, not a rehearsed pitch:
INTERVIEW QUESTION: When you've teamed with colleagues in the past, describe a time when everyone didn't agree and how your team reached a solution.
That question carries a few assumptions worth checking: has the candidate been part of a team before, have they been part of a successful one, do they have a process for solving disagreements, how did the team actually resolve one, and did the candidate learn something from it. How someone answers, or fails to answer, tells you a lot.
Teaming and collaboration take a group from lukewarm to actually effective when there's respect, compassion, and a shared way of solving problems. Listen for whether the candidate talks about drawing on support from others in the building. In my own hiring, I look for candidates who describe, without prompting, how "we" solves more problems than "I."
Once you've hired for positive energy, use a rubric to check how the team is actually functioning. Here's one built for exactly that: The Best Teaming Rubric Out There.
The best strategy, in short: don't hire energy vampires.
2. Call Them Out
Too often we tiptoe around the real problem instead of naming it. Picture three fifth-grade teachers on a team. Two work well together. The third brings negativity to every meeting. The other two know the negativity is coming before they even sit down, but they're reluctant to confront it because they don't like conflict. So it persists, and the team's success is already decided before the meeting starts.
In The Energy Bus, Gordon illustrates a direct approach with the line, "Look, I don't allow any negativity on my bus. If you are not going to be positive and contribute to our vision then you're off the bus and you'll have to look for another job."
Most teachers won't have the authority to say those exact words, or the power to hire and fire a colleague. As a principal, I want my staff to try confronting the problem as a team first, before it lands on my desk. Sometimes I don't even know a conflict exists, because teachers assume I'm too buried in student and parent issues to take on one more thing. In reality, I'd put this ahead of a lot of what I deal with daily. A teacher-versus-teacher conflict on a fifth-grade team can touch 75 students. That's not a smaller problem than one student's issue or one parent's complaint. It's a bigger one.
Just like with students, a few honest "I" statements go a long way with colleagues:
- I feel…
- I'm frustrated when…
- I'm looking for more positive…
- I feel the right thing to do is…
- I'm disappointed when…
Calling out an energy vampire takes time, especially without another option on the table. How blunt you need to be depends on the trust already built with that colleague. A few questions worth asking yourself before you say something:
- Does your team have procedures for tackling curriculum, instruction, and assessment together?
- Does your team have a process for handling disagreement?
- Does the teacher know when their behavior frustrates or disappoints you?
- Does the teacher want to solve problems, or stay in the negativity?
- Have you told them how you actually feel when they get to you?
- Do you feel like you can confront them directly?
If you've had that conversation and seen a change, here's a piece I share with my staff every year on why it matters: 212 Degrees of Customer Service in Education.
If nothing changes, the next step is bringing in the principal. Hopefully they've dealt with this kind of situation before, or have ideas for what comes next. A principal can have conversations one-on-one that a colleague can't, and can walk the whole team through scenarios in search of common ground.
If none of that works, and the principal is willing to follow through, the next step is a one-on-one meeting between the principal and the energy vampire, and the appropriate performance-improvement or disciplinary process under district policy and applicable state law or contract. The rest of the team won't be part of those conversations, but they should see the effects. If the behavior doesn't improve, school leadership may consider reassignment or other appropriate personnel action, subject to district policy, contracts, collective bargaining agreements, and state law.
Calling out an energy vampire is worth the discomfort.
3. Treat Energy Vampires as a Sickness
The last option is the most disappointing, but it's the reality for a lot of teachers. I care about tenure, and I'm glad we have it, but there are people who shouldn't have it protecting their seat on the bus. You know the type: energy vampires.
This option is for teachers and principals who've put real time and energy into the vampire and are still getting nowhere. Sometimes the principal hasn't gone the route of a formal improvement plan, or hasn't evaluated the situation for what it is, often because other needs got prioritized first. In reality, this should rank near the top. An energy vampire affects a large number of students, and the principal may not realize how many of the problems reaching their desk trace back to one person.
If the principal can't remove the energy vampire, and your own efforts haven't worked, it helps to think of the situation like a sickness. No one wants to get sick. We wash our hands more, move away from someone coughing, and sometimes choose a different room entirely.
Washing our hands is being proactive about not getting sick. We hear the negativity, and instead of absorbing it, we move away or meet it with reframing and positivity. That's the equivalent of finding positive people, or returning your own thinking to a place that counters the negativity. Do that routinely.
We also move away from someone who's visibly sick. We hear the cough, decide whether it's serious, and take precautions. The cough is the negativity. We move toward the people in the room who bring something better, and it's worth noticing how naturally people gravitate toward positive colleagues, just as some gravitate toward the negativity instead. Gossip and complaint often travel faster than anything positive, which is part of why this pattern is so sticky.
If you have the option to change teams, grade levels, or even schools to get distance from the negativity, take it, for your own sake and your students'. Sometimes that option isn't available. Maybe it's the only job in the area, or you're staying because you love the kids and the work. If that's the case, treating the energy vampire as a sickness, and protecting your own energy accordingly, may be the most realistic strategy you have.
Stay away from energy vampires when you can. When you can't, protect your own energy first.
A plug for Jon Gordon: read his book, The Energy Bus, for the rest of his rules on positivity. Thanks, Jon, for a book that connects so well with education and daily life.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an energy vampire in a school setting?
An energy vampire is a colleague whose chronic negativity, complaining, or resistance to teamwork drains the energy of the people around them. In schools, it's usually a pattern that shows up in meetings and team planning, not a single bad day.
How do you spot an energy vampire before hiring one?
Listen for red flags during reference checks: difficulty teaming, vague examples of collaboration, or a long history of job changes. Then ask scenario-based interview questions about how the candidate has handled disagreement on past teams.
What should I say to a colleague who's an energy vampire?
Start with "I" statements: "I feel frustrated when…" or "I'm looking for more positive…" rather than accusations. It keeps the conversation about the impact on you and the team, not a character attack.
What if my principal won't address the problem?
Keep appropriate, factual records of specific workplace concerns, consistent with school or district policy, and ask leadership for guidance. If nothing changes, protecting your own energy, whether that means limiting contact or in some cases changing teams or schools, may be the more realistic path.
Can tenure protect an energy vampire from consequences?
Where teacher tenure or similar employment protections apply, they generally provide due-process protections rather than immunity from discipline. The procedures and grounds for discipline or dismissal vary by state, district policy, contract, and collective bargaining agreement.
- Screen for it at hiring — reference-check red flags and scenario-based interview questions may help identify potential collaboration concerns before someone joins your team.
- Address it directly, early — "I" statements and a direct conversation resolve more of these situations than avoidance ever will.
- Loop in leadership when it stalls — a principal willing to follow through on the appropriate district process is often the difference between a fixed team and a stuck one.
- Protect your own energy — when the situation doesn't change, limiting contact or changing teams isn't giving up. It's what's left when the other strategies don't work.
Culture problems like this one are part of why some teachers start looking at a change of school, grade level, or even role. If you're weighing a move, the sponsored programs on this page include options for teachers exploring a new credential or the next step in their career.
As a 5th grade teacher, in 2010 Jon won the Presidential Award for Elementary Math and Science Teaching (PAEMST). As a principal, his school won the 2012 Blue Ribbon Award. In 2018, he won the National Distinguished Principal Award (NDP). In 2019 he won the National No Kid Hungry Breakfast Hero Award.
Jon is the author of three guides published on teacher.org: An Educator's Guide to Combat Bullying & Bully Prevention; Teacher Evaluation: A Transition Guide to Exemplary Performance; and You are the Wild Card: Infusing Fun Back into Curriculum. He has authored a children's picture book that was released January 2019 titled Benjamin’s Visit to Principal Reads Office…again! (available at www.archwaypublishing.com)
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