Your opinion: Was the teacher in the wrong writing her “lazy whiners” blog?
A high school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia who was suspended for a profanity-laced blog in which she called her young charges “disengaged, lazy whiners” is driving a debate by daring to ask: Why are today’s students unmotivated — and what’s wrong with calling them out?
As she fights to keep her job at Central Bucks East High School, 30-year-old Natalie Munroe says she had no interest in becoming any sort of educational icon. The blog has been taken down, but its contents can still be found easily online.
Her comments and her suspension by the middle-class school district have clearly touched a nerve, with scores of online commenters applauding her for taking a tough love approach or excoriating her for verbal abuse. Media attention has rained down, and backers have started a Facebook group.
“My students are out of control,” Munroe, who has taught 10th, 11th and 12th grades, wrote in one post. “They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying.”
And in another post, Munroe — who is more than eight months pregnant — quotes from the musical “Bye Bye Birdie”: “Kids! They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs. Noisy, crazy, sloppy, lazy LOAFERS.”
She also listed some comments she wished she could post on student evaluations, including: “I hear the trash company is hiring”; “I called out sick a couple of days just to avoid your son”; and “Just as bad as his sibling. Don’t you know how to raise kids?”
Munroe did not use her full name or identify her students or school in the blog, which she started in August 2009 for friends and family. Last week, she said, students brought it to the attention of the school, which suspended her with pay.
“They get angry when you ask them to think or be creative,” Munroe said of her students in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. “The students are not being held accountable.”
Munroe pointed out that she also said positive things, but she acknowledges that she did write some things out of frustration — and of a feeling that many kids today are being given a free pass at school and at home.
“Parents are more trying to be their kids’ friends and less trying to be their parent,” Munroe said, also noting students’ lack of patience. “They want everything right now. They want it yesterday.”
One of Munroe’s former students, who now attends McDaniel College in Westminster, Md., said he was torn by his former teacher’s comments. Jeff Shoolbraid said that he thought much of what Munroe said was true and that she had a right to voice her opinion, but felt her comments were out of line for a teacher.
“Whatever influenced her to say what she did is evidence as to why she simply should not teach,” Shoolbraid wrote in an e-mail to the AP. “I just thought it was completely inappropriate.”
He continued: “As far as motivated high school students, she’s completely correct. High school kids don’t want to do anything. … It’s a teacher’s job, however, to give students the motivation to learn.”
A spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association declined to comment Tuesday because he said the group may represent Munroe. Messages left for the Central Bucks School District superintendent were not returned.
Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said school districts are navigating uncharted territory when it comes to teachers’ online behavior. Often, districts want teachers to have more contact with students and their families, yet give little guidance on how teachers should behave online even as students are more plugged in than they’ve ever been.
“This is really murky stuff,” she said. “When you have a teacher using their blog to berate their students, maybe that’s a little less murky. But the larger issue is, I think, districts are totally unprepared to deal with this.”
Munroe has hired an attorney, who said that she had the right to post her thoughts on the blog and that it’s a free speech issue. The attorney, Steven Rovner, said the district has led Munroe to believe that she will eventually lose her job.
“She could have been any person, any teacher in America writing about their lives,” he said, pointing out that Munroe blogged about 85 times and that only about 15 to 20 of the posts involved her being a teacher. “It’s honest and raw and a little edgy depending on your taste. … She has a deep frustration for the educational system in America.”
Rovner said that he would consider legal action if indeed Munroe loses her job.
“She did it as carefully as she could,” he said about her blog. “It’s so general that it applies to the problems in school districts and schools across the country.”
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“He continued: “As far as motivated high school students, she’s completely correct. High school kids don’t want to do anything. … It’s a teacher’s job, however, to give students the motivation to learn.” – In my day the motivation came from my parents. “Do it or else”…so I did it, no whining, no debate. In todays namby-pamby world I would have run wild abusing the system.
I think the administrators who are trying to fire her ought to be taken to task. One is free in this country to blog on his/her own time without any fear of retribution from those who disagree.
We still have the first amendment – don’t we?
Hooray for her for speaking the truth.
Totally agree! It is NOT the teacher’s job to instill motivation into students. Parents have become disengaged from the educational process, expecting teachers to do it all, and when they don’t/can’t/won’t, the teachers get blamed.
Now, I’m not saying teachers are perfect, but it would take one heck of an amazing educator to overcome the complete lack of interest that passes for parenting in today’s society.
I like what this teacher had to say, but it sounds as though the students don’t like to be called out for their lack of effort. In a society where we fall over ourselves to ensure that every child has a positive experience in sports, school, life, perhaps we forget that failure is a great motivator, and sometimes you gotta learn how to fail before you can learn how to fight to the top.
I see a lawsuit involving free speech a-brewin’…
First – she didn’t name names – although I have heard on talk shows many suggesting that she should have.
Second – the emphasis has been on her slamming of a group of the students who aren’t doing their job in the education process, but other articles have stated that she also complimented student who were doing their job. I’m guessing that the students she was most frustrated by were students she KNEW were capable of better, but too lazy to do the work.
In addition, for at least a decade, teachers have been denied the right to do their job of holding back little Tommy or Susie who can’t or won’t do the work to grade level (heaven forbid the little darlings be ‘embarrassed’ and not get to continue on with their friends – and this is in large part because, as others have pointed out, the PARENTS weren’t doing their part of the education job). I am not a teacher, nor have I ever been – nor do I have children, so I really have no vested interest in this debate; however, I see education as a “3 legged stool”:
1) The TEACHER needs to present material in such a way as to make it clear to the students, and where possible to assist the students in learning that material. The teacher must be as fair as possible when grading (and the school system should not be allowed to force teachers to give “favorites” – like star athletes – better grades) – and attempt to reach out to parents when the students aren’t doing their “job” for whatever reason.
2) The STUDENT needs to attend classes when not too sick to do so and to come prepared on a daily basis – with books and homework in hand. I can live with a student who has a B- arguing for a B if he/she believes that they earned it – but it has to be done respectfully – and there is no way on the planet any student should believe he/she can jump a C to an A.
3) The PARENT(S) needs to attend ALL parent-teacher conferences, and make sure the student understands the importance of education Any parent who spends time whining about “teachers’ unions” or in any way indicated in front of the child that school is nothing more than glorified babysitting is a BIG PROBLEM! For all the talk about how much better private schools are, my best guess is that a BIG part of the reason for that is when a parent is writing a check for education, they make sure they are getting their money’s worth, while in the public school sector (which is the only school sector that has to – or often does – accept special needs students), parents often take it for granted as a “right” without any responsibilities on the part of either the parent or the student!
If any of the 3 legs are “broken”, how can education succeed?
In case I haven’t made myself perfectly clear – I have ZERO problem with this teacher’s blog. I also applaud the Florida mother who made her 15-year old wear a sandwich board for 4 hours on a busy street corner advertising his 1.2 GPA after she and her husband (apparently working with the child’s teachers) had done everything else they could to help him get motivated from getting him extra help (tutoring I am guessing), demanding to see his homework, grounding him and taking away his cell – those are parents doing their job!
Most folks who have been “Dooced” – terminated from their jobs because of their blogs – DID NOT name names or specific details on their blogs, but were fired anyway. Doesn’t matter. You should know better than to talk sh-t about your job on your blog, in this day and age. She made a dumb choice.