What is and What Should Never Be

When I started this blog, I made some rules for myself.  For example:

• I will write this blog anonymously. 
• I will focus on how my job as a teacher and my role as a parent simultaneously impact each other. 
• I will write positive, thought provoking, or humorous things, but if I must be negative about something, I will try to do so constructively. 
• I will never write about a student in a way that he or she could feel slighted by what I said, partially because of the anonymity I am maintaining.
• I will give credit where credit is due.  (Thanks to Jimmy Page and Robert Plant for the name of this blog entry.) 

Some were conscious decisions, while others seemed at the time to be no-brainers.  But then I read articles like this one, and then this one, which reminded me that what seems like common sense isn't always so common.  It appears that Ms. Natalie Munroe and I share some similarities- we are high school teachers, we are both about 30 years old, and we both have blogs which we believe are anonymous.  Except that's where the differences begin, because Monroe, through her lawyers, claims that she "[strove] to keep her blog anonymous," even though her photograph, first name, and last initial were utilized on her blog.  Umm, even someone who isn't an English teacher knows that the definition of "anonymous" is really being stretched there.  We also don't agree on how to appropriately vent frustration.  I know people will say she has a right to free speech (her lawyers already have) and that's true, but the First Amendment doesn't absolve her from having to face the consequences of what she has said and how she has said it.  This isn't the same thing as a teacher privately complaining to his or her spouse about a student, or even speaking ill of a particular class too loudly at a restaurant and having a student or parent overhear.  Her blog is a public forum, so how she went about degrading her students was tantamount to walking into the home of every one of those kids and standing in front of the TV and shouting it to their faces. 

One of her own former students very articulately addresses how he feels about the situation in the first article, and I couldn't agree with him more, at least regarding her behavior.  I don't share his opinion that "[h]igh school kids don't want to do anything..."  In fact, much of what Ms. Monroe was complaining about reflects more about her ability to manage a classroom and motivate students than it does about the state of today's youth.  Every teacher struggles with a particularly challenging student or even a group of them during a school year, but resorting to what Natalie Monroe did is unacceptable, from both a parental and educational perspective.  Those "applauding her for taking a tough love approach" and members of the Facebook group that support her should be ashamed of themselves.  I laud the students who notified the powers that be about the blog, and I hope that if any teacher were to ever rain insults down in a general or specific manner on my son, he wouldn't hesitate to get an administrator or another teacher involved.  I recognize that public employees and everyday citizens in this country are experiencing a real and valid surge in union solidarity in light of the debacle in Wisconsin, but if any teacher directly or indirectly calls my boy "rat-like," you can damn well bet I'll want him/her fired.  If publicly insulting students is what's best for kids, come next September, Central Bucks East High School will still have at least one teacher in its hallways who has demonstrated a frightening lack of empathy and a tendency toward lapses in judgment-- not the least of which is that she continues to defend her actions rather than admit that she has erred.