<p>You are right about that, annoyingdad. Parents really are getting “worstest.” 
(And maybe I am just letting off steam about teachers getting “worser”)</p>
<p>Did this idiot really complain about a student who asked questions? I thought that was the purpose of teachers-to explain, to educate, to answer questions. This woman should think about a different career.</p>
<p>penname, Thank you for sharing that information. I suspected as much.</p>
<p>oh wow she needs to get off her ego trip
suspend her, i say. not because she did something wrong (she didn’t) but she needs a time-out in the corner and replace her pay cheque with a reality cheque</p>
<p>Sorry, no sympathy here. I don’t think students are any different in NJ than they are in PA, and for all their immaturity (hey, they’re kids!), my H, who teaches HS, sincerely, really likes his students. Nothing dismays him like hearing this kind of contempt for students from teachers.</p>
<p>If this woman really feels this way, she should not be teaching. She’s the kind of teacher who gives teachers a bad name.</p>
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<p>I could not agree more with you, Garland. </p>
<p>Fwiw, this story brings back memory of the infamous Phantom Professor who did not hesitate to call SMU students animals. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/62357-phantom-professor.html?[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/parent-cafe/62357-phantom-professor.html?</a></p>
<p>When will people understand that ranting viciously on a blog rarely remains … private!</p>
<p>I sympathize with this teacher. Granted, I’ve never taught nor would I ever blog about people this way. But, I’ve done a lot of tutoring in my time.</p>
<p>I tutored math and I’ve heard every excuse in the book. Though, in my experience, any kid with the right kind and the right amount of help could make progress and, much more often than not, pass their assigned course. The biggest roadblocks were the parents who’d take me to task over the performance of their kids who, in the worst cases, did no math work except when they were with me.</p>
<p>On the scale of problems facing kids today, parents > teachers.</p>
<p>Haven’t read the blog, but I think I recognize the general stereotype. Fits with one you see among coaches, which is roughly “How am I going to be recognized as a great coach when I have these bums as my players?”. I suppose the teaching equivalent is “how can I achieve the self affirmation that I need and deserve as a teacher when I am surrounded by such cretins?”</p>
<p>Writing this stuff down is imbecilic. Go have a drink and find a bartender to complain to. </p>
<p>As for the administration and its response–there are some people who ought not be teachers.</p>
<p>In the blog she wrote:</p>
<p>“They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying.”</p>
<p>Sounds like she is talking about herself and some in her field, especially during contract negotiations. We would all be better off without her…I hope she gets fired.</p>
<p>I have a great deal of respect for the vast majority of good teachers…but this isn’t someone who likes students!</p>
<p>Why are her students unmotivated? Maybe because they have a teacher who’s attitude reflects absolutely no respect or care for them. Can students be annoying? Of course! But that doesn’t alter the fact that her job is to motivate them, to inspire them, to educate them. That is, in theory, what she is paid for (we won’t go into the fact that the district isn’t concerned with how good a teacher is at their job, especially once they have tenure)</p>
<p>If you don’t like your students, stop teaching. They are the reason you have a job at all and should be part of the driving force that brings you to work every morning. </p>
<p>As an aspiring teacher, I find her comments distrubing.</p>
<p>I read a lot of this woman’s blog. It seems to me the way she is going on now is just an attempt to gloss over what she wrote so that people who will never see what she ACTUALLY wrote will be able to jump on the bandwagon and agree with her and she can go down a martyr for education. Whatever. Her main excuse for herself in the media seems to be that it was only meant to be a private joke for her friends to see, but if a student went on a public tirade against her teachers and used that excuse, it’d never fly-- everyone is expected to know that the internet is not private. And that list penname wrote of mock report card comments? There were FORTY of those.</p>
<p>Reading some of her entries, I wonder if she is mentally ill. A relative of mine has bipolar disorder and you can always tell when she’s manic because her entries become VERY long and VERY personal, so that you start to feel uncomfortable reading them. This blog reads very similarly, so I can’t help but wonder. Spending the day coming up with forty different insulting comments about your students is certainly not the mark of a healthy woman.</p>
<p>There’s another entry where she essentially says (and to be absolutely clear, I am paraphrasing here): “I’m not saying to physically abuse your kids, but my parents physically abused me, and I turned out great, so parents today should be more like my parents-- but I am not saying to physically abuse your kids.” She likes to claim she’s not saying something in particular, and then spend eight paragraphs saying exactly that. And that’s essentially what she’s doing in the media now to gloss over her behavior. It sounds to me like she needs a less stressful job and some counseling.</p>
<p>Hmmm.</p>
<p>Perhaps until you consider this article a friend sent me:</p>
<p>[Multiple</a> fires at Southwest lead to two evacuations - KansasCity.com](<a href=“http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/11/2648333/multiple-fires-set-at-southwest.html]Multiple”>http://www.kansascity.com/2011/02/11/2648333/multiple-fires-set-at-southwest.html)</p>
<p>The school has had 1400 suspensions in the first semester – there are only 1,200 students in the school. Three principals since the start of the school year. When the district added more security guards, one got pushed down the stairs. This is the “early college” program.</p>
<p>The superintendent then appointed an early childhood specialist to be principal of the high school and defended the action by saying “Hey, I don’t have much urban experience either, but I think I’m doing a pretty good job and the school is safer than ever.”</p>
<p>The teachers, one of whom was trampled in the last fire alarm, are filing a grievance. The result - the next week, there was another fire making the trip for the Fire dept. #51.</p>
<p>Can’t blame everything on teachers if they’re given no resources and forced to work with students who are essentially feral. I asked someone why it’s hard to turn the kids around across the country and was told that many come from neighborhoods where the average life expectancy for kids is early twenties. No reason to plan for a future when you don’t expect to have one.</p>
<p>The teacher should be reinstated. She said what many want to say and did it on her own site, not in the building. Free speech should take precedence here.</p>
<p>She seems like a lazy whiner herself to me.</p>
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<p>I’m not sure it’s quite that cut and dry for a teacher. If nothing else, they are going to have a heck of time finding enough parents who agree to have this women teach their child.</p>
<p>^^^I don’t see how this is relevant; this is from an entirely different state, and there is no indication that this woman’s school was anything like this.</p>
<p>This almost reminds me of this case in Georgia. An article of the case can be found here: [Teacher</a> Ashley Payne fired for posting picture of herself holding beer on Facebook | GA Daily News](<a href=“http://www.gadailynews.com/news/61845-teacher-ashley-payne-fired-for-posting-picture-of-herself-holding-beer-on-facebook.html]Teacher”>http://www.gadailynews.com/news/61845-teacher-ashley-payne-fired-for-posting-picture-of-herself-holding-beer-on-facebook.html)</p>
<p>It sounds like this teacher in PA used real names (I’m not 100% since idk the school at all) which she should absolutely face consequences for. However, if no real names were involved then her journal shouldn’t really be a problem. Everyone has bad days at work, no matter what the job is. This person’s journal was her way of venting so therefore the journal would only have negative experiences. There are good and bad students in every school district across every socio-economic class. </p>
<p>In general, what a person does in private/outside of work should not lead to consequences in the workplace given that the activity was not illegal, imho.</p>
<p>A big part of a teacher’s job should be to motivate and instill the love of the subject that they’re teaching, or at least make it interesting.</p>
<p>My kids French teacher came right out and told my son’s class at the beginning of the year (it was the second year that she had the same class) that she “hated” his class and her actions showed them that she did. She screamed, would refuse to teach if she was angry, and humiliated kids in front of the class. He ended up dropping the class because he couldn’t take her rants. </p>
<p>His chemistry teacher has told the class that he could care less what grades the kids get as long as he gets paid. </p>
<p>Unions and tenure have created apathetic teachers who don’t love what they’re doing and shouldn’t be teaching. Yes, there are many good teachers, but unfortunately, there are many bad ones too.</p>
<p>This teacher is clearly in the wrong profession and needs to make room for one who wants to help students learn and excel. But, she shouldn’t be fired over her right to free speech.</p>
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<p>That attitude is the reason why it’s hard to turn the kids around across the country. Look at what Geoffrey Canada has done in Harlem. 97 blocks, in arguably the worst neighborhood in the entire country–yet his students in the Harlem Children’s Zone and Promise Academy are overwhelmingly headed toward graduation and then college. The same kids who people claimed “cannot learn” seem to learn just fine when provided with the same quality of facilities that more affluent neighborhoods are given and the quality of educators, minus the hurdle of teacher unions, that every student deserves.</p>
<p>The fact that there are some children who have mental problems that lead to arsonry or other unacceptable behaviors does not negate the fact that the majority of students aren’t motivated because they have never been given anything to be motivated about. If you’re a student in general math classes, where the teacher passes out a work sheet where you repeat the same math problem over and over, day in and day out, for years and years…well, I’d be unmotivated to.</p>
<p>Change that to a math class where the teacher is excited about math and expects you to be excited to, and all of the sudden, you have motivated kids. It’s easy to see in every high school across America. Apathetic teachers breed apathetic students.</p>
<p>I think it’s interesting that that one post is the one that got the most attention. There are others which, if the students found the blog-- which evidently they did because they commented on it-- they would be able to identify who was being spoken about. Like this one:</p>
<p>"“The fact that the jerk who was out 3 days around our last major assessment because his family took him on a trip to Puerto Rico and then emailed me all of this nonsense about how he shouldn’t have to take the test on time because he was “excused” for those days, was out again today because his family took him to the effing Master’s golf **** over Easter Break.”</p>
<p>While the teacher had a completely legitimate gripe with the kids parents if they were yanking him out for vacation and leaving her to deal with catching him up, anyone in the class could have read this and known exactly who she was complaining about. That’s just completely unprofessional. If she had a problem she could have dealt with it privately, she doesn’t get to complain about students and their family’s with identifying information like where they went on vacation and when, and talk about the emails sent between the two of them, in public. </p>
<p>There is also an entry where she admits to blogging at work. She states later in the blog that the computer froze and that she didn’t actually post until she got home, but for all we know others of these entries were posted right at school. You don’t know that this is something she just did in the privacy of her own home, she readily admitted to writing a blog at work at least once.</p>
<p>Too late to edit, but to add to that, people also take for granted that everything she says about her students-- and her colleagues, she complained about them, too-- is even true. The “nobody likes to hear the truth!” defense only works if you actually know she’s telling the truth. She says so herself throughout the blog that she is prone to hyperbole and goes on over-the-top angry rants about all sorts of things just because she thinks its funny.</p>