Sharing "God's Love" by getting teachers fired.

[acroyear]

Teachers have a right to free speech, too (with a poll) : Pharyngula:

Elizabeth Collins was a liberal, concerned teacher who created a blog to express her views about stuff she cared very much about, such as writing, teaching, and activism. Read it, it's good stuff, and it's obvious she cares passionately about those subjects. She also wrote about her experiences as a teacher, taking care to avoid naming the school or any individuals by name, but still being free about criticism and praise while protecting people's privacy.

I know, most of you are already going "uh-oh", and you already know where this is going...

There're reasons my mother quit teaching after the last private school she worked at let her go.

Comments

[stori-lundi.livejournal.com]

I'm on the fence about this. While I do believe that one's private life is one's private life, I do believe that teachers are held to a higher standard because of their influence on children. I say this as a former public school teacher and someone who works kids on a regular basis.

I also don't think that her blog was entirely "anonymous" as she lists her real name, location, profession and even posted a photo of herself. Pretty easy to find her if you looked for her. Other full-time teachers regularly post on LJ but non of them use their real names, locations, or anything else that is traceable back to them. I'm sure you could figure out who they are if you really wanted to go looking but I don't think you could figure out who they were if you saw their blog and didn't know their LJ username.

People in other professions have also been fired for blog posts, bitching on Facebook, or otherwise posting contrary opinions to what the prevailing attitude is at work. Heck, ask anyone who has worked for Disney. They have some of the strictest rules about employee conduct off the job that exists.

So while I don't think what happened to the teacher is right, I'm not surprised to see it happen and think she was pretty stupid about being so open with her own personal information in her blog. I also know that I also regulate what I say and do around the places I work and make sure that I don't post anything that could be seen in a bad light back by someone who either is employing me or could employ me. Par for the course in the information age.

[tchwrtr.livejournal.com]

Tracking back to the cited post on her blog, I found her well-educated, and a good writer.

The topic in that post was how a well-timed thank you note to a teacher can really brighten said teacher's day. However, she could have made this point without going into the "possible stalker" that she spoke of in the entry.

I'm agreeing with you here--talk about your career, but don't talk about the current job.

However, and I'm heading into conjecture-land here, it seems her workplace was a conservative one, well-funded by the local conservative community, and a private employer at that. KNOWING this, she posted her opinions in the blog. Again, agreeing with you here. She should have known the popular opinion, and sadly, she has been fired over it.

All that said, she was threatened, and it looks like that threat was acted upon. I hope she has reported the stalker qualities of the incident to the police, and will file against her employer.

(Then go to the local public school system--it needs bright people like her.)