Not the teacher's pet but the teacher's pet peeve

When I was an educator, I had my share of students who came to me to ask for referral letters for further studies or job interviews.

It was usually a pleasure to write glowing reports about the students who did well. Luckily for me, I never had to either fake it, or be brutally honest and write a poor assessment (after all, the reports are sealed and the students won't get to see them).

But a Straits Times report today (17 Feb) had a story "Teacher suspended for 'lazy whiners' blog", about an American high school teacher in Philadelphia who was suspended from her job for her profanity-laced blog which has since been taken down.

What got the 30-year-old English literature teacher into trouble? She was being brutally honest in her opinion of some of her students. To be fair to her, she never named any student and claimed that her blog was never meant to be widely read and she had only nine followers.

But she was "outed", fingered by students and word got to the school administrators.

Here's some samples of her "publish and be damned" comments:

Her students "curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire and are just generally annoying".

Some students were "out of control" and were "rude, disengaged, lazy whiners" and/or were "just generally annoying" and "disobedient, disrespectful oafs". She wished she could call students "frightfully dim" or "dunderheads" on their report cards. She felt constrained by the "canned" responses available when writing her comments on the report cards.

[Hmm. One day I shall dig out my school report cards to have a relook. For sure, there were many red marks, and appropriate comments about them. One science teacher -- "Mr Molecule Shaker" -- was one red-marker. But the English teachers -- in my case -- always had nice things to say about me.]

Back to the ST story... the US teacher wished she could use phrases like "dresses like a streetwalker" or "shy isn't cute in 11th grade; it's annoying". She then lets rip:

"A complete and utter j**k... Although academically ok, your child has no other redeeming qualities".

"Rat-like".

"Lazy a**hole".

Wah. Maybe she should take a job as an instructor with the US Marines.

And if I were to write a bad report, I would be a bit more classy, like:

"He will forge a career that rests on the shoulders of others" (he cheats; passes off others' works as his own).

"Give Carl a break and he'll run with the opportunity" (break as in "prison break").

"Johnny has an amazing photographic memory" (yeah, it's a blank negative each time).