Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
School officials in a district near Philadelphia say a high school English teacher posted profanity-laced rants online that labeled her students "out of control" and "disengaged, lazy whiners."
District: Pa. teacher called students lazy whiners - Yahoo! News (http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110210/ap_on_re_us/us_teacher_suspended_blog - broken link)
Do you think she should get fired for her blog posts?
Do you think she should get fired for her blog posts?
I read the Yahoo link you posted, and, I for one think teachers should get combat pay...and again, this raises the question about the Internet and any (alleged) expectations of privacy...
Maybe she had reached the end of her rope, and felt her blog was the only place she could say how she REALLY felt about her students, co-workers, and administrators...
I say, then, if she is upset, and feels she can no longer perform her job at the level she feels she's capable of, then she SHOULD be able to express herself---but then, you may open yourself up to criticism and anger from some parents who are quick to cry out 'gasp! not MY little Johnny or Jackie!'
No, she SHOULDN'T be fired...she has as much right to express herself, as those parents do...I would hope that her sounding off will light a fire under the school board administrators, and prompt them to investigate if there is any merit to her posts...
if students were the customers (parents the payers) and someone made a blog post calling their customers lazy whiners then i probably wouldnt want my child being in the teacher's class. if the school was operating like a business, she would be costing the business money.
No, first of all, although I don't know what she wrote, it sounds like something any teacher that had to deal with troublesome students would feel, and express. (It's the same with say, dealing with any stressful job and letting off steam about annoying co-workers, unless she went and said something extreme, such as a threat)
Ask yourself this. Imagine that instead of finding out about her opinions online, she had been overheard (by the same parents) in the park or at a mall gossiping to her friends using those exact same words. Could she get suspended? What if the parents tape-recorded the conversation to prove it was her? You think she'd deserve it?
If you would disagree, I don't see how it'd be any different.
Fired? Probably not.
Disciplined or reprimanded? Certainly.
Teaching is a profession that absolutely requires you to establish respectful relationships with students, parents, and administrators. If you go out and alienate the population that you are supposed to be working with your effectiveness is going to drop off dramatically.
Essentially this teacher has destroyed her own credibility. It is now going to be much more difficult for her to manage and discipline students. It's going to be much more difficult for her to contact parents with concerns about the progress of her students. And it's going to be much more difficult for her to rebuild a working relationship with her administration after her profanity-laced diatribe against her students and administration.
Free speech is not the issue. The issue is that she was unprofessional and has damaged her ability to to her job. That is at least worthy of a serious reprimand of some sort. But we all do make mistakes. Sounds like could easily have been a case of "blogging under the influence" which is ALWAYS a bad idea. Don't go spouting off in public if you've had a few too many glasses of wine or beer. I'm not sure a one-time mistake like this should necessarily mean your career is destroyed. In most other professions you're not likely to get fired for something like this done on your own time. But you are likely to get spanked and could hurt your career.
I don't care what a teacher says or does on his own personal time (legally of course) as long as my child is learning and doing well in school. No, she should not have been fired.
I think if you're going to write public things, especially about students, you need to be careful.
On the other hand these sorts of discussions go on all of the time behind closed doors. And in some schools what she said is told directly to the students.
There should be separation between your personal life and your employment, but it doesn't always work out that way.
These days if you talk about your employer on Facebook in a negative light they might reprimand or fire you. Conversely other employers might google you and find that you're not a "team player." Is it fair? Not really, but I'd err on the side of caution and leave these sorts of things personal and between you and your colleagues.
Discretion and tact are very important don't let the fact of fairness (or unfairness) in this case get in the way of conducting yourself professionally.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Cindy, You Make A Good Point...
