Hey look, another story about someone losing their job because of their personal blog.

[kane_magus]

"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 sensation by daring to ask: Why are today's students unmotivated — and what's wrong with calling them out?"

As has already been proven time and again in the past, this is why you don't write angry blogs about your job (assuming you care about keeping said job, that is). I'm not saying employers should be able to fire people for their personal blogs, because I honestly don't think they should be allowed to do that*, but that doesn't change the fact that they can and do fire people all the time for exactly that, however. Blog about work at your own risk.

It is irrelevant that she was almost assuredly right on the money concerning the asinine behavior of her students (and kids in general, these days). I'm not even going to touch that issue right now. The bottom line is that, like many others before her, she blogged about work, they found out about it, and they took punitive measures against her. End of story.

* - Within reason, of course. If you're posting trade secrets or other NDA-related things on your blog, for example, then they should most definitely be able to fire you for something like that.

Comments

[tokoz.livejournal.com]

What I always wonder about when this issue comes up, is why didn't the blogger just f-lock the journal? I was under the impression most blogging sites have some kind of whitelist/blacklist function, and I thought most let you "minimize inclusion in searches" as well.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

My guess is that a lot of people have a "That'll never happen to me" conceit about their journals getting discovered and them getting fired. Either that, or they're simply not aware of the risks (even despite all the recent stories about it).

[rabbitucker.livejournal.com]

Speaking as a classroom teacher of some years' experience, it's practically a given that the kids you teach will be "disengaged, lazy whiners." I'm not saying it's good (because it isn't), but that's just how it is. That is why good teachers are always stealing and/or innovating ways to engage the students and manipulate their behavior. If you can't get past the fact that the majority of kids will not actively enjoy school, then you are going to suck as a teacher anyway.