<p>Either way, I really don’t buy into the idea that it is a TEACHER’S job to motivate a high school student. I could maybe buy that mindset for elementary school - but by high school, it is the student’s job to show up motivated. If the motivated student isn’t learning based on a teacher’s hostility, incompetence, whatever, that’s clearly a problem. I haven’t read her blog - sounds like she was angry. But I would venture a guess that most of us, when frustrated or on bad days, have been less than joyous about our jobs. Clearly she made a mistake in placing it on the internet with any identifiable information. And she might even hate her job and be a horrible teacher, I don’t know.</p>
<p>But being frustrated with the entitlement many students display, and being told it is your job to motivate students who should, by the time they reach high school age, be able to choose whether or not to motivate themselves, I don’t think that’s so bad. Students getting coddled by their parents believing that it is the teacher’s job to motivate and “my-special-snowflake-certainly-couldn’t-be-that-bad” and “MY family vacation is more important than your test schedule!” is what’s leading to the levels of helicopter parenting and absurd entitlement we are seeing in many COLLEGE students - the Chronicle of Higher Ed’s forums is full of profs with plenty of stories about how student evals say things like “You didn’t motivate me so I didn’t learn!” “I’m a paying customer [of this school] and I deserve…” etc etc.</p>
<p>Obviously it would have been VERY inappropriate to say these things directly to her student, and it was clearly inappropriate to include identifying information. But the attitude? I think it’s one many frustrated teachers share.</p>
<p>I feel I wouldn’t be labeled in the same way as those students, simply because I’m not one of those students</p>
<p>You don’t know that- because you are only hearing her side of the story.
It’s possible you would appear identical, because she isn’t seeing clearly or without bias.</p>
<p>2+2, I’m not disagreeing with your opinion that it’s not entirely the teacher’s responsibility to motivate high school students. But that was no excuse for her to have posted such blatant insults on the internet. </p>
<p>I also agree that there are an alarming number of students with a sense of entitlement, but the same goes for the teachers as well. They think that because they’re the ones giving out the grades, they can give out as much busy work and unnecessary assignments just to drive the class average or manipulate test scores. It’s sort of like the chicken or the egg dilemma. No one side is “right” but her choice to post such things on the internet was certainly wrong.</p>
<p>That’s fair powerbomb. I meandered over to the cache</p>
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<p>That was me in high school. I’m not offended by the characterization now, probably wouldn’t have been then.</p>
<p>I don’t know - I <em>knew</em> kids in high school who were airheads, brownnosers, had their parents advocate for every little thing, the sibling thing happens ALL the time even if it’s not posted on the internet (one HS teacher told my younger sister “You’re more hard working, but your sister was definitely smarter”), drama queens, inappropriate dressers, kids who seemed like they might shoot up the school… did you not? Are you meant to not see it when you become a teacher? Or just not say it? Or say it but only if it’s non-identifying?</p>
<p>I agree, though, posting anything like that with identifying information is ridiculous and unwise, but I don’t necessarily fault her for the sentiment. But hell, there are plenty of spaces on the internet where people do nothing BUT complain about their jobs (particularly those jobs where you have to deal with customers!) and I don’t know that venting about your job on the internet necessarily makes you bad at it - it might even make you BETTER if you have a separate place to vent than directly at your students.</p>
<p>I just don’t think that grossly unprofessional behavior can be justified with “because it’s true” or “because everyone is thinking it.” That sounds like excuses entitled lazy ass high school students would make. :P</p>
<p>If you read the blog, she states that it was the students who found this blog. If she wrote it publicly for all to see and they did see it, I don’t see how it makes it any better that she didn’t say it directly to her students. She may as well have. Hell, she wrote the entry at school.</p>
<p>this probably has nothing to do with the hot topic, but what happens if you do bad in your junior year?? would you still get in a 4 year college??? </p>
<p>I’m not making excuses, I think linking any sort of “real life” profile with an online profile that says these things is certainly unprofessional. But I don’t think the comments she makes about students in her blog show she’s a terrible teacher who spews hatred everywhere she goes. The comments may well be true, could be exaggerated for comedic effect with a grain of truth in there, and while it was certainly unwise of her to make it possible for people to link her comments back to her and her students, I don’t think it’s wrong of her to think or to say them in anonymity.</p>
<p>Essentially, I don’t think a teacher thinking (or saying) these things about her students is, on its face, grossly unprofessional. Context matters, of course, and saying them directly to her students is clearly unprofessional, putting them on the internet in an easily-searchable/linkable to her spot is unprofessional, but saying them at all? Nah, not so much.</p>
<p>ETA - Sorry emaheeval, wrote before I saw your edit.</p>
<p>In our local paper, there is a panel of high school students who write columns in a special section on Thursdays. A girl from the teacher’s homeroom wrote an article today on the topic. She asserts that the teacher actually mentioned to her students that she had an online blog, so apparently she was not keeping it a secret from them. I almost wonder if she hoped they looked for it. Perhaps that’s the reason she included her picture and real name on her profile. I assume that’s how they found it so easily. Geez, if I were a student and the teacher said he or she had a blog, I’d look for it regardless of whether I liked the teacher or not. I’d simply be curious.</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing that. I’ve been amusing myself with this story the past few days and am loving the details from the locals. I definitely remember being in high school and feeling geeked whenever anyone discovered one of our teachers had a facebook-- there was never anything to see, but it was sort of a, “hey, they exist outside of school! weird!!” kind of thing. If she mentioned it, of course they looked for it. </p>
<p>If she didn’t mean for them to see it, that was certainly an oops. She’s been telling people that the things she writes are meant to be private jokes between her and her family and friends, so I’m not sure why she would have mentioned it to her students, particularly knowing that she’d written about them several times. We all have brain-dead moments but YIKES. Talk about bad judgment. I hope if nothing else her students take this as a lesson about safe and responsible internet use.</p>
<p>Uacceptable student behavior and attitudes don’t excuse the teacher, but I do think the educational establishment should be examining whether there’s something more that could be done to support teachers in this difficult climate.</p>
<p>One reason teachers become as frustrated as this woman, is that they no longer have any recourse when they are losing control over a classroom, whether through their own fault or not. Give bad grades to slackers? No, parents complain about their poor persecuted child, and the inept teacher. The administration capitulates. The grades are magically raised. Besides, schools almost never fail kids anymore for not mastering the material. They fear it will stunt the children psychologically and now summer school has become too expensive for districts to afford. My friend, who’s a teacher, was told by her principal that she was not allowed to give all zeros to a student despite the fact he did NOTHING at all–not one classwork or homework assignment was attempted or completed.</p>
<p>Discipline them? Heck no. That would be damaging to their self-esteem and inspire lawsuits. I remember when a naive principal in our district told a kid he had to clean up the mess he had made during a cafeteria food fight. The student refused, and his mother supported him, saying he wasn’t a janitor and that would be too demeaning a job for him. Kid never had to do it. My same friend says that 9 times out of 10 when she calls a parent to discuss disruptive or disrepectful behavior in a student, she’s accused of being a racist. The kid pulls a knife on her and she’s the problem? Her principal does not back her up. Even though the accusation could easily be disproven, he doesn’t want any trouble, much less a lawsuit. And no one wants to put their life and property on the line for these troubled kids. Who wants slashed tires or worse? It’s really a terrible mess.</p>
<p>If we separate the issue of lack of support for teachers and this woman’s behavior, I can agree with you on the former issue. That isn’t at all representative of what I saw in my high school, but I accept there was probably more going on behind the scenes than I could see and I know not all schools are the same. From what I can remember witnessing, everybody is in a really tough spot on all sides. I think it’s a lot more complex than just entitled students and families stripping teachers of their power. I have served detentions for standing next to something that had been broken the lunch period before, after I was assaulted by a male classmate with a 2x4 because I asked him to stop spilling water on me at lunch, and when half the class got separated from the teacher during a fire drill because the hallway was mass chaos when everyone went out. I think the out-of-control environment, whatever started it, is perpetuating a vicious cycle that is worsening the situation and having had the experiences I mentioned I am reluctant to blame it all on the students. If the teachers weren’t so frazzled things like that probably wouldn’t happen, but there is a LOT at play here besides just lack of discipline at home, I think.</p>
<p>The common denominator in all of those situations was a god awful principal. Not saying that has anything to do with the situation-at-large but it’s interesting that it worked out that way-- I wonder if better leadership to support teachers in dealing with the wild kids would help. You should hear what’s going on in our high school right now. A student sexually assaulted my sister on campus, was convicted of assault and battery (got out of CSC with plea bargain, I think) and while my sister was being forced to attend school with this kid present the principal flat out told my parents that they didn’t believe her and that they would do nothing to protect her from him during the proceedings, including now that he has been convicted. When the guy surprised my sister at school she ran to the bathroom to call my mother for a ride home and she was suspended for using her phone at school-- you bet my mom made a phone call. Families are not much happier with schools these days than teachers are with them. NOBODY is under control. And this may not be as hotshot a district as Natalie Munroe’s, but people move here to go to this school, it’s not like we’re one of <em>those</em> schools that have a reputation for this sort of thing. Nobody is under control, not the students or the people running the school.</p>
<p>I get the free speech issue and that’s all ethical and good and righteous, but ultimately, I don’t think they should have gone public with this story. -_- They have a new mommy blacklisted for the rest of her career - yikes!</p>
<p>I hope either a parent or she leaked it to the media and not the school. In her most recent post she talks about all the traveling she is doing for interviews, so she doesn’t seem to be interested in stopping the media circus despite what she says. One could argue she just wants to clear her name but I don’t know if I buy it-- does it take dozens of interviews to do that? I don’t know the answer to that. Not sure what I would do if it was me.</p>
<p>So long as school funding is affected by “incident” statistics, principals will continue to sweep things under the rug. An e-mail or phone call to the principal is insufficient to evoke a serious response. I’ve learned to cc the superindendant and police department in order to see any action to deal with things like pot smoking in the hallways, given that the problem was being ignored by the hall monitors. See the comment about not wanting tires slashed…</p>
<p>School board and superintendant did nothing. Police investigated and he was prosecuted, but she still has to sit in class with him even after conviction because the school doesn’t care. Same thing happened to me when I was assaulted with the 2x4. </p>
<p>My point in sharing those anecdotes was just to explain the origin of my sense that the problem is a lot more complicated than just coddled kids acting out. I am not sure how you can get up in arms about students being out of control when these kinds of things happen behind the scenes. The entire institution is out of control. I don’t pretend to be an expert about education, FAR FROM IT, so I don’t know what those changes are, but maybe it wouldn’t have become such an accepted practice to call the school to pester about punishments if the school could be trusted to act responsibly-- which is obviously not the case with our school. My mom had to call all the gosh darn time for complete bullcrap stuff. We had to get lawyers involved the time that I was beaten with the block of wood. My mother spent so much time during my K12 education sitting at home wondering what the hell was going on at the school-- the only complaint she ever had about teachers was when they refused to allow disability accommodations, so she wasn’t one of those trying to tell teachers how to do their jobs, but there were SO many problems with renegade administrators on power trips and just general absurdity. So that’s the background I am coming from, which is all I have to go off of. I recognize that that makes me biased. I just wonder if there’s more to the story here. I don’t mean to say that kids behavior and poor parenting aren’t a serious issue,or that it isn’t THE issue, I just am skeptical that they’re dragging schools down all by themselves.</p>
I definitely remember being in high school and feeling geeked whenever anyone discovered one of our teachers had a facebook-- there was never anything to see, but it was sort of a, “hey, they exist outside of school! weird!!” kind of thing. If she mentioned it, of course they looked for it. </p>
I just wonder if there’s more to the story here. I don’t mean to say that kids behavior and poor parenting aren’t a serious issue,or that it isn’t THE issue, I just am skeptical that they’re dragging schools down all by themselves.</p>