Shut Up and Teach or Get Out of Dodge

Two things are fact: Students learn in different ways and not all students are willing to learn.

In the public school system, most teachers do not have a choice about who they teach. They are charged with doing the best job possible with the resources available.

Granted, this is not the easiest job in the world. The complications almost defy belief or description. These are children we are dealing with, after all. Anything is possible. Some have great aptitude, some have slow or low learning ability. Some are well behaved and some are not. A teacher has to be educator, disciplinarian, friend, counselor, babysitter and more rolled up in one.

In spite of the problems with educating youth (problems, I might add, that were bemoaned by Socrates himself), what right does a teacher have to criticize students en masse, whether as satire or as a ‘get-it-off-my-chest’ diatribe. Does the First Amendment and Free Speech rights cover this? In my opinion, it does not.

For one thing, a teacher is a role model and supposed to be an example to our students. When a teacher resorts to calling students names and generalizing them as pretty bad people, how can that teacher reenter a classroom and teach? Don’t we try to teach our children not to generalize or call people names?

I, for one, would not feel comfortable in a classroom with a teacher like Central Bucks East High School, Natalie Munroe. Would I qualify as an ‘out of control…rude, disengaged, lazy whiner’ as Ms Munroe so kindly puts it? Would I feel comfortable handing over my work to someone that I feel harbors disingenuous feelings towards me as a student?

“They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying,” Ms Munroe writes.

Wow.

Is this every teacher’s experience or just hers? I used to teach and I continue to work with youngsters all the time. How come I have never experienced this? Could it be that the attitude of the teacher is often reflected back in the students?

But this is digressing from the point I wish to make.

I can see no sane way in the world that any parent would want their child in Ms Munroe’s classroom. Give her kudos for being honest about her feelings, yes. However, now we know that she does not belong in the classroom.

Dealing with children takes a special mentality and mindset. We know that during adolescence all sorts of hormonal changes are taking place that can lead to somewhat unbalanced states in certain children. This is no excuse for their behavior but it does help us to realize that not everyone is suited to coping with the daily challenges of teaching teenagers. We also know that every parent is not the best parent in the world. Hey! Get over it! TEACH!!!

Ms Munroe does not want to teach. She wants to lecture to angels and have a fine and pleasant day, every day. That is hardly what teaching is about.

Rest assured, my kid will not be entering her classroom. My kid will go into an environment where a teacher looks at each child as an individual and makes evaluations and judgments from there. If my kid is a problem, be honest and let me know. Together we can work on the problem from there. Wishing one could make a comments like “I hear the trash company is hiring”; or “I called out sick a couple of days just to avoid your son”; or “Just as bad as his sibling. Don’t you know how to raise kids?” and “Kids! They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs. Noisy, crazy, sloppy, lazy LOAFERS” is not constructive engagement. It is in fact, quite provocative.

Where was Ms Munroe during teacher education and child psychology classes? Negative attitudes breed negative results.

I always thought that the teacher was infallible and that my child had better straighten up the apple cart and get it right in class. Now, if I walk into a classroom with a teacher like Ms. Munroe, I will have to reevaluate my long held concept of the teacher being correct.

Ms Munroe’s behavior has caused me to wonder if some, not all, of the teachers out there are “out of control, rude, disengaged, and lazy whiners”.

To all of you good teachers out there, thank you for doing to job you do. I will try not to let a bad Munroe apple spoil the pot.