Bloggers, Bloggers Everywhere
It seems I wasn’t the only teacher at my school who knew how to blog.
During a conversation with a former co-worker about computer stuff (I’m still the school’s back-up tech guy, it seems) she asked me if I had seen the article in the Chicago Tribune about the teacher who had been airing the school’s dirty laundry on a blog much like mine.
I can’t believe I missed this, but thanks to the Internet and the Tribune’s searchable database of old stories, I was reading the story in minutes. Here is an excerpt:
The author never identified himself or the school, but he apparently told some colleagues about the blog in hopes that word would get around. It did.
According to both the Tribune article and my former colleague, no one has openly admitted to authoring the blog, but most teachers and students have been quick to point fingers (my friend said that my name was brought up, until someone pointed out that there had been posts that occurred after I quit). The teacher those fingers pointed to has taken several days off school because he “fears for his safety.”
Whoever the author is, he or she took down the site this past week because of the fiercely quick and vitriolic response from students, faculty, and staff. Apparently, the one or two hard copies floating around are about 30 pages long.
That’s a lot of job dissatisfaction.
An excerpt from the blog, and some teacher reaction, courtesy of the Tribune story:
Wow. I almost wished I still worked there. Then again, I hear that the teachers are forming into camps, taking sides on the issue of this blog. And I know hostile glances would be directed my way: about three months ago, someone put hard copies of my blog in everyone’s mailbox. At the time, I got nothing but positive comments about it (although only three fellow teachers came forward to say anything). I learned later that my authorship was pretty much common knowledge around the school.
But back to this other blog. I gotta agree with this last excerpt I’ve posted here. And even the students, faculty, and staff all agreed that the incidents described in the blog do, unfortunately, happen at this school. But what really set people off was the perception that the blogger was making racist comments when he described his students as “project-dwelling welfare cases” or something to that effect.
And here’s where I make my own incendiary remarks:
I would be among the first and loudest to proclaim that not every student at this school is on welfare on living in a housing project. In fact, I’m sure most of my (former) students don’t fit this stereotype at all. But their behavior certainly doesn’t allow much room for anyone not familiar with them to have any other ideas about them.
Guess what, kids, the world is a harsh place. This teacher wrote what he wrote out of frustration born of an immediate familiarity with the terrible social and educational conditions at the school. His comments were spurred by emotion. I’ve said similar things in the privacy of my own home many times, and for the same reasons—pure, unadulterated frustration with the situation of that school, and with urban education in particular.
But there are plenty of people out there who make those kinds of observations casually, not based on experiences like the ones the teacher described, but based on habit. And until those upset students start voicing their objections and exceptions in rational, coherent, correctly-spelled, profanity-free, well-reasoned, standardized English, nothing is going to change that.
This is where I almost wish I still taught there. I’d do a whole unit: “Being Black in America.” I’d have the students document their lives with their own blogs, by taking pictures with the school-owned digital cameras, by making short videos (as soon as we got a video camera). I’d have them bring in their music, tape TV shows with black characters, magazine and newspaper articles by and about blacks, and I’d make lessons around the messages these things are sending, the stereotypes they either break down or reinforce. I’d encourage them to show the world what they wanted the world to see about their lives. Of course, this is all easy enough to say now that I’m not teaching anymore. But I’m still enough of a teacher to see the perfect opportunity to get them writing about these issues, to get them seriously thinking about their place in the world.
But still, that’s not enough to make me want to go back to the kind of environment this blogger describes. When I remember how bad it was, I’m glad I’m out, because until the system undergoes major changes, no amount of testing or money is going to make schools like this better.
During a conversation with a former co-worker about computer stuff (I’m still the school’s back-up tech guy, it seems) she asked me if I had seen the article in the Chicago Tribune about the teacher who had been airing the school’s dirty laundry on a blog much like mine.
I can’t believe I missed this, but thanks to the Internet and the Tribune’s searchable database of old stories, I was reading the story in minutes. Here is an excerpt:
He labeled his students "criminals," saying they stole from teachers, dealt drugs in the hallways, had sex in the stairwells, flaunted their pregnant bellies and tossed books out windows. He dismissed their parents as unemployed "project" dwellers who subsist on food stamps, refuse to support their "baby mommas" and bad-mouth teachers because their no-show teens are flunking.
He took swipes at his colleagues, too—"union-minimum" teachers, literacy specialists who "decorate their office door with pro-black propaganda," and security officers whose "loyalty is to the hood, not the school."
The author never identified himself or the school, but he apparently told some colleagues about the blog in hopes that word would get around. It did.
According to both the Tribune article and my former colleague, no one has openly admitted to authoring the blog, but most teachers and students have been quick to point fingers (my friend said that my name was brought up, until someone pointed out that there had been posts that occurred after I quit). The teacher those fingers pointed to has taken several days off school because he “fears for his safety.”
Whoever the author is, he or she took down the site this past week because of the fiercely quick and vitriolic response from students, faculty, and staff. Apparently, the one or two hard copies floating around are about 30 pages long.
That’s a lot of job dissatisfaction.
An excerpt from the blog, and some teacher reaction, courtesy of the Tribune story:
"Do you not realize that many people go home and CRY to their loved ones about what they experience here? Do you have any idea the psychological and emotional trauma that is inflicted on those who suffer because of the daily injustices and wrongdoings here? To fear for your own safety? To know that you will likely be unemployed, hated, spit on, punched, and have property destroyed? This is not a one person blog. This is a building speaking for the suffering it sees every day."
One . . . teacher publicly challenged this view, both in a signed posting and in numerous conversations with her English classes.
"Although many of our students adopt tough facades and insist they are grown, they are still children: sensitive children who still crave guidance, encouraging words and positive reinforcement. . . .Was the author present when students, having read the blog, dejectedly hung their heads with pained, angry tears stinging their eyes?"
Wow. I almost wished I still worked there. Then again, I hear that the teachers are forming into camps, taking sides on the issue of this blog. And I know hostile glances would be directed my way: about three months ago, someone put hard copies of my blog in everyone’s mailbox. At the time, I got nothing but positive comments about it (although only three fellow teachers came forward to say anything). I learned later that my authorship was pretty much common knowledge around the school.
But back to this other blog. I gotta agree with this last excerpt I’ve posted here. And even the students, faculty, and staff all agreed that the incidents described in the blog do, unfortunately, happen at this school. But what really set people off was the perception that the blogger was making racist comments when he described his students as “project-dwelling welfare cases” or something to that effect.
And here’s where I make my own incendiary remarks:
I would be among the first and loudest to proclaim that not every student at this school is on welfare on living in a housing project. In fact, I’m sure most of my (former) students don’t fit this stereotype at all. But their behavior certainly doesn’t allow much room for anyone not familiar with them to have any other ideas about them.
Guess what, kids, the world is a harsh place. This teacher wrote what he wrote out of frustration born of an immediate familiarity with the terrible social and educational conditions at the school. His comments were spurred by emotion. I’ve said similar things in the privacy of my own home many times, and for the same reasons—pure, unadulterated frustration with the situation of that school, and with urban education in particular.
But there are plenty of people out there who make those kinds of observations casually, not based on experiences like the ones the teacher described, but based on habit. And until those upset students start voicing their objections and exceptions in rational, coherent, correctly-spelled, profanity-free, well-reasoned, standardized English, nothing is going to change that.
This is where I almost wish I still taught there. I’d do a whole unit: “Being Black in America.” I’d have the students document their lives with their own blogs, by taking pictures with the school-owned digital cameras, by making short videos (as soon as we got a video camera). I’d have them bring in their music, tape TV shows with black characters, magazine and newspaper articles by and about blacks, and I’d make lessons around the messages these things are sending, the stereotypes they either break down or reinforce. I’d encourage them to show the world what they wanted the world to see about their lives. Of course, this is all easy enough to say now that I’m not teaching anymore. But I’m still enough of a teacher to see the perfect opportunity to get them writing about these issues, to get them seriously thinking about their place in the world.
But still, that’s not enough to make me want to go back to the kind of environment this blogger describes. When I remember how bad it was, I’m glad I’m out, because until the system undergoes major changes, no amount of testing or money is going to make schools like this better.
posted by Christopher at
5:56 PM
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