Taylor the Teacher

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Kate Olson has me thinking about why I blog anonymously. Here are some thoughts:

Blogging anonymously is more confining for the anonymous blogger than it is harmful for the blogged-about. ~isn’t that always true of censorship?~ Instead of asking why some people ~teachers~ would blog anonymously and questioning their professionalism, maybe we should be asking why so many people ~teachers~ feel they have to hide behind their blogs? Kate quotes Ringmar’s book, “The Blogger’s Manifesto,” in her post, I’m NOT Anonymous,

“Everything which can be revealed will soon be revealed.  Woe to those whose lives cannot withstand public scrutiny.“

Ringmar’s woes were for those who are afraid of teachers blogging , not for teachers trying to tell the truth about schools.  Not that I think Kate passing undue or harsh judgment on anonymous bloggers, she’s just discussing the issue because some people do.

I’m always thinking about what will happen when my students/co-workers/administrators/parents/and the guy that sells me wine at the corner store find out I’ve been blogging this thing all along.  I honestly have no idea. Chances are, very few people would care. But the ones that would care would care very very much.

And when they are bad they are horrid.

So I honestly don’t see any way to tell the truth and blog under my own name. Does blogging anonymously mean what I say can’t be trusted at all, that it’s meaningless?  I can understand how some people would think so, and I can absolutely see being fed up with deception. But a lot of “professional” conversation is just that, meaningless deception. ~in fact, “professional” seems an increasingly punitive and nebulous word nowadays. is it just me? just my school? has it always been this way?~ Political conversation about education is even worse.

Does this mean I don’t take seriously what I say on this blog? Yes and no. I expect people to take it for what it is, a personal blog with a conversational tone, written by a teacher. People have to decide for themselves if they think I’m telling the truth as I see it, without taking what I say as gospel truth. Yes, I’m switching registers. Isn’t that allowed? ~and isn’t discerning that i’m doing so part of reading critically?~

Didn’t the business world catch onto this a long time ago? Matt Cutts doesn’t speak for Google, but he speaks about Google.  Maybe the reason Matt Cutts can be honest about Google on his blog is because Google doesn’t have as much to hide.

This blog is me, being a human being and a teacher in this school district. Maybe my attitude is bad and needs to be corrected, but aren’t I more likely to be able to do that if I can work out my thoughts? ~on or offline?~  Maybe Matt is taken seriously at Google.

Or am I just supposed to fall in line?

Or maybe it’s me that has to hide because I’m just such a bad-attitude, no-account teacher?

If so, I’m far from the only one with a problem here. The only teachers I know in that school that aren’t looking for a way out are the ones in comfortable circumstances that really can walk away. ~as the wise old cash kitties say, happiness is having options.~

So, for now, I’m anonymous or I’m silent.

So how do I decide what I should say on this blog? I’m known to rant, but I do not expose people for petty crap. I don’t expose people who don’t deserve it. I never blog an incident I don’t believe to be true. If I revealed HALF of what I’ve only heard about this school, it would send you running. ~to whom? nobody cares~

I’ve even been holding back on some stuff that actually happened before my eyes, ~same scenario every time: someone does some heinous shit. taylor is stunned like a deer in headlights that anyone actually acts this way. by the time taylor recovers, she’s been out of it so long she’s already beginning to tell herself it must’ve been her fault somehow, and thereby retains idealistic vision of life, only now it comes out as cynicism. then, someone does some heinous shit. again.~ partly because I’m shell shocked, and not sure about exposing this on the Internet until I’ve digested it myself. Maybe that’s just another form of hiding. But it’s also because I honestly do not want to hurt people. I never forget that one of my students may someday read this blog, knowing I wrote it.

But really, can you blame me for hiding? Teachers are definitely not afforded the same freedoms as other adults. If can’t talk about education or any other area of interest, in a real way without being under THEIR umbrella, they’re not asking me to do what I thought they were asking me to do.

I thought ~i’m embarrassed to say i really believed this~ I was supposed to foster learning in young people. I thought that passing through all their hoops from 3 college degrees, to NCLB-mandated standardized tests (several), paying fees, filling out forms, being fingerprinted by the FBI, taking classes in the summer, writing goals for professional development and student achievement and justifying them statistically every year, and maintaining a portfolio of my progress as a teacher for periodic review by several layers of admin, and going to a minimum required number of “professional development meetings” ~which largely serve to take time out of any real development I could do for myself~ would be enough to convince them to leave me alone to teach.

Instead, every layer of bureaucratic crap ~never mistake that’s what much of what’s called “reform” in education actually amounts to, in practice~ those at the tippy-top of the heap put on of me only provides ammo for someone in the middle ~and completely unaccountable, I might add~ to fire at will.

Each way that I’m asked to justify myself to administration only provides one more tactic they can use to get what they want, which doesn’t always coincide with what’s best for kids, or common decency, or even common sense. ~doesn’t always clash with these things either.~  But way too much of the time what they want is either selfish, political, or arbitrary. There are also times when I believe it to be misguided, but I could be wrong. Wish they would discuss it with me. Maybe they could teach me something.

But they don’t care about my concerns about learning. They want me to shut up and do what I’m told.

Maybe if I were allowed to speak about it, I would understand.

But I’m not supposed to be a thinker anymore. I’m a teacher. My job is enforcement.