Sometimes it feels like things we say online are protected from real-life consequences. But one Philadelphia teacher found out otherwise when she was escorted off school premises because of her personal blog.
The teacher – named as Natalie Munroe – griped about her students on the site, and after being discovered (by her students no less), the teacher is not apologizing.
“While I never in a million years would have guessed that this many people would ever see my words, and I didn’t even intend them to, I stand by what I wrote and I think it’s good that people are aware now,” Natalie Munroe wrote on her blog Saturday morning.
When the blog post was discovered on February 8th, the teacher was unceremoniously escorted from school grounds and suspended without pay.
“There are serious problems with our education system today – with the way that schools and school district and students and parents take teachers who enter the education field full of life and hope and a desire to change the world and positively impact kids, and beat the life out of them and villanize them and blame them for everything – and those need to be brought to light. If this ‘scandal’ opens the door for that conversation, so be it. Let that conversation begin. Stay tuned here.”
Given recent legislature that deems Facebook as a suitable way to complain about your boss or coworkers without fear of punishment, the question that arises is whether or not a personal blog is also protected.
“It’s still an outlet to keep up with friends. I need to write. That’s what I do. I don’t think that, as a teacher, with or without the scandal surrounding, I should not be allowed to do something that everybody else is allowed to do.”
The school itself doesn’t have an Internet policy, which is helping fuel the teacher’s feelings of anger towards the school.
The whole debacle, which received major media attention has prompted teachers to deactivate their Facebook pages.
“But the fact remains that every year, more and more, students are coming in less willing to work, to think, to cooperate. These are the students I was complaining about in my blog. The same way millions of Americans go home at the end of the day and complain about select coworkers or clients or other jerks they had to deal with, I came home and complained on my blog about those I had to deal with,” she says.
When asked if she would return to the school CB East, her attorney answered: “I don’t know that she should answer that question at this point. I don’t know that that’s a viable option.”
(Via PhillyBurbs.com)
