In Defense of the Blogging Teacher
Since it hit the Associated Press wires, the story has spread to more than 200 publications. Natalie Munroe, an English teacher at Central Bucks High School, was suspended and faces dismissal for what she wrote about her students and school on her personal blog “Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?”
Things like:
Concerned your kid is automaton, as she just sits there emotionless for an entire 90 minutes, staring into the abyss, never volunteering to speak or do anything. Seems smarter than she actually is. Has a massive chip on her shoulder. Too smart for her own good and refuses to play the school ‘game’ such that she’ll never live up to her true potential here. Has no business being in Honors. A complete and utter jerk in all ways. Although academically ok, your child has no other redeeming qualities. Lazy. Shy isn’t cute in 11th grade; it’s annoying. Must learn to advocate for himself instead of having Mommy do it. One of the few students I can abide this semester! Two words come to mind: brown AND nose. Dunderhead. Complainer. Gimme an A. I. R. H. E. A. D. What’s that spell? Your kid! There is such a thing as too loud in oral presentations. We shouldn’t need earplugs. Att-i-tude! Nowhere near as good as her sibling. Are you sure they’re related? I won’t even remember her name next semester if I see her in the hall. Asked too many questions and took too long to ask them. The bell means it’s time to leave! Has no business being in Academic. Rat-like. Lazy asshole. Just as bad as his sibling. Don’t you know how to raise kids? Sneaky, complaining, jerkoff. Frightfully dim. Dresses like a street walker. Whiny, simpering grade-grubber with an unrealistically high perception of own ability level. One of the most annoying students I’ve had the displeasure of being locked in a room with for an extended time. Rude, beligerent, argumentative fuck. Tactless. Weirdest kid I’ve ever met. Am concerned that your kid is going to come in one day and open fire on the school. (Wish I was kidding.) I didn’t realize one person could have this many problems. Your daughter is royalty. (The Queen of Drama) Liar and cheater. Unable to think for himself. I hear the trash company is hiring… Utterly loathsome in all imaginable ways. I called out sick a couple of days just to avoid your son. There’s no other way to say this: I hate your kid.
That’s all from one post.
The superintendent called her blog “very egregious,” the union is “cooperating with the administration’s investigation,” and the general sentiment from her students and their parents is that she’s getting what she deserves.
The blog was taken down, but I’ve spent much of this morning reading her posts before they disappear from Google’s cache. Let’s say at the outset that there are rules against this sort of thing. The Pennsylvania State Education Association warns teachers on its web site to “think before you post.”
Second, Munroe does seem to be one crabby woman. Third, she’s no conservative folk hero. Asked to list her “things I can live without,” she included “right-wing Republicans.”
But after reading dozens of her posts, I can see that she took pride in her work, and couldn’t understand why her students utterly refused to take pride in their work. If her descriptions of her efforts are accurate, she spent A LOT of time explaining the same things over to over to kids who not only ignored directions, but didn’t care a jot.
One post should be read in its entirety, but I’ll give you the gist here:
Not only did I re-structure this paper for them and choose a different, easier topic for them than I’ve done with kids in the past, but I thought that I’d accounted for everything and put it in writing and gave everyone a copy and explained and modeled and chunked and lowered expectations to such a degree that, in my mind, I’d created an idiot-proof task. I set these kids up for success.
AND THEY STILL FAILED!
It’s hard not to take this personally. I can’t help thinking of it and wondering what I may have done differently to make it easier still for them. But I know–and I know to my very core–that this is NOT my fault. This is not a case where there’s been a miscommunication and they didn’t understand what I wanted. This is not a case where the material was too difficult for them to discuss intelligently. They had the standards. They’d done good work with the material in class and already discussed it intelligently. No, this is a case where I was asking them to do something, to show a product, to put a little effort into what they were doing. This was a case where I was asking them to think. But that is something that they just will not do. And how dare I ask them to do it?
I can say with some degree of certainty that I have spent longer grading and commenting on some of their papers than they did writing them in the first place. I am absolutely giving them a lot more thought.
Then go and read her posts on student cheating, and teaching Beowulf (“They didn’t get it. Most of them didn’t even remember the poem and looked at me like I was nuts because I was reciting lines of a poem from memory to them.”), and kids and their parents negotiating for better grades.
I don’t know if Munroe is cut out to be a teacher. Maybe she’s too high-strung and demanding. Maybe she would flourish at a different school or in a different district. And maybe she deserves to be dismissed for violating rules of employment both she and her union were aware of. But if she’s being a faithful reporter of the facts, the biggest problem is not that she was blogging about students.
How to regulate the blogging of teachers is not an issue worth pursuing. How to deal with belligerent and incurious students is.
February 10th, 2011 at 10:28
Thank you for this! The frustrations faced by teacher nationwide, preK-12, around “incurious and belligerent” students are enormous. Most teachers do not blog as Ms. Munroe did, but I have no doubt her musings would have touched a nerve with almost every teacher – at least once in a while.
February 10th, 2011 at 20:34
Every teacher thinks it at least once in awhile. Some of us are a little more discrete than she was.
February 13th, 2011 at 10:12
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February 17th, 2011 at 08:41
This is a very helpful post but I do want to comment that the list you post is not a list of comments about specific students. Teachers have to be careful about how they convey negative feedback to parents. This is irritating and frustrating to some people. Munroe is blowing off steam by writing the kinds of things she sometimes thinks and has to suppress. I’m sure in her reflective moments she understands that these are not charitable or helpful thoughts. We all have uncharitable thoughts when we are tired and frustrated.
Perhaps, the lesson here is that we should turn to our spouses or closest friends to vent this way rather than blogging.
Some of the student and parent comments seem truly vicious and they are not reading her blog posts with the same consideration they would like Munroe to have for their own weaknesses. They seem to be taking things out of context. Of course this is not any kind of valid sample of people’s reactions.
February 17th, 2011 at 12:03
I think in this case we should think about consequences for a blogger like this. What bothers me about this person is that she has not shown any remorse for what she has done. I’m not sure how a community would move forward with the attitude dispayed by this person. Every parent is well within their rights to request that their child not have this teacher, and to have the request be granted.
Would you take your kid to a pediatrician who wrote a blog like this…I doubt it.
And as someone else wrote on another blog, when your kid comes home and says that their teacher hates them….you can’t refute it…because the teacher appears to hate most of the kids.