Teachers are people too

The Associated press reported that a teacher in Pennsylvania, Natalie Munroe, has been suspended for her personal blog in which she complained about her students. She reportedly called them “lazy” and “whiners” and a few other unflattering things. She did not name names; she generalized.

And now she may lose her job. And I don’t think she should.

True, she may not have had the best judgment in publicly blogging about her students. (Were I in her shoes I would have certainly used a pseudonym.) That being said, I’m going to have to pull out the trump card: 1st Amendment.

Naysayers will not like this argument. “She was inappropriate! She was mean-spirited! She is a teacher!” they will say.

The problem is, the free-speech right applies to everyone, regardless of profession, religion, political affiliation, or belief system. We may not like it that everyone is guaranteed the right to say whatever (sometimes ridiculous) thought (or tweet) enters his or her mind, but you can’t take that right away from anyone, otherwise we all are at risk. Even crazy people who write on chalkboards and get shows on Fox News should still have the right to say whatever paranoid, idiotic thing they want to.

Even then, free speech is a good thing. It’s one of the things Egyptians just fought for. It’s something people all around the Middle East are after. It guarantees we don’t end up in an oppressive regime like Iran. So let’s not start making rules about what people can and can’t say, and where they can or can’t say it.

I am not a teacher, but I come from a family of teachers: My mom, my sister, my grandfather, my brother-in-law, my great aunts… My mother also worked as a school administrator.

I think my mother would say that the teacher was wrong to post such things about her students if students and parents could find out, because my mom believes that the relationship between a teacher and her students is very important, and that teachers must maintain a certain decorum.

But my mom would never deny her *right* to post it.

Likewise, my grandfather, who won the state “teacher of the year” award, twice, would probably think she used poor judgment, but he would recognize that teachers get frustrated with their students and have feelings such as these.

Then again, I don’t remember my grandfather ever talking badly about his students. He loved to tell stories about people who ran into him later in life and thanked him. Or he would tell us how he caught someone’s imagination and made a difference. He was very proud of his time in the classroom. He may have vented or told war stories to his fellow teachers, but never around me.

Now I have no idea if Ms. Munroe is a good teacher or not. She might be great or she might be ineffectual. In my imaginings, she is probably someone who wanted to change lives and now finds her job a lot harder than she thought, and worries if she is getting through to these kids. And she may have a point about the kids these days, but she’s still blaming others for her feelings of inadequacy. (But this is all just a hunch.)

And therein lies the rub: She is, teacher or not, a human being.

Should she be a positive role model who exudes professionalism even in private? Sure. Can we fault her for being human? Nope. Nor can we fault her for expressing herself in writing.

Because, heck, that’s what I’m doing here.