Yahoo; Wrote:FEASTERVILLE, Pa. – 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 she fights to keep her job at Central Bucks East High School, 30-year-old Natalie Munroe says she had no interest in becoming any sort of educational icon. The blog has been taken down, but its contents can still be found easily online.

Her comments and her suspension by the middle-class school district have clearly touched a nerve, with scores of online commenters applauding her for taking a tough love approach or excoriating her for verbal abuse. Media attention has rained down, and backers have started a Facebook group.

"My students are out of control," Munroe, who has taught 10th, 11th and 12th grades, wrote in one post. "They are rude, disengaged, lazy whiners. They curse, discuss drugs, talk back, argue for grades, complain about everything, fancy themselves entitled to whatever they desire, and are just generally annoying."

And in another post, Munroe — who is more than eight months pregnant — writes: "Kids! They are disobedient, disrespectful oafs. Noisy, crazy, sloppy, lazy LOAFERS." She also comes up with a colorful list of comments that she felt should be available on student report cards.

Munroe did not use her full name or identify her students or school in the blog, which she started in August 2009 for friends and family. Last week, she said, students brought it to the attention of the school, which suspended her with pay.

"They get angry when you ask them to think or be creative," Munroe said of her students in an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday. "The students are not being held accountable."

Munroe pointed out that she also said positive things, but she acknowledges that she did write some things out of frustration — and of a feeling that many kids today are being given a free pass at school and at home.

"Parents are more trying to be their kids' friends and less trying to be their parent," Munroe said, also noting students' lack of patience. "They want everything right now. They want it yesterday."

A spokesman for the Pennsylvania State Education Association declined to comment Tuesday because he said the group may represent Munroe. A message left for the Central Bucks School District superintendent was not immediately returned.

Sandi Jacobs, vice president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, said school districts are navigating uncharted territory when it comes to teachers' online behavior. Often, districts want teachers to have more contact with students and their families, yet give little guidance on how teachers should behave online even as students are more plugged in than they've ever been.

"This is really murky stuff," she said. "When you have a teacher using their blog to berate their students, maybe that's a little less murky. But the larger issue is, I think, districts are totally unprepared to deal with this."

Munroe has hired an attorney, who said that she had the right to post her thoughts on the blog and that it's a free speech issue. The attorney, Steven Rovner, said the district has led Munroe to believe that she will eventually lose her job.

"She could have been any person, any teacher in America writing about their lives," he said, pointing out that Munroe blogged about 85 times and that only about 15 to 20 of the posts involved her being a teacher. "It's honest and raw and a little edgy depending on your taste. ... She has a deep frustration for the educational system in America."

Rovner said that he would consider legal action if indeed Munroe loses her job.

"She did it as carefully as she could," he said about her blog. "It's so general that it applies to the problems in school districts and schools across the country."

___

Associated Press writer Dorie Turner in Atlanta contributed to this report.

Anonymous Moose Wrote:First, its a shame that this woman was fired for expressing her First Amendment right to Free Speech.

XTOTHEL Wrote:Didn't the article say she was suspended without pay? != fired.

Anonymous Moose Wrote:I mispoke obviously. I have a habit of overusing the term.

XTOTHEL Wrote:Didn't the article say she was suspended without pay? != fired.

Mute Wrote:She was suspended with pay.

XTOTHEL Wrote:As seen from above, people misspeak.

Worthyness Wrote:I honestly don't see the problem. She didn't point anyone out directly, and she didn't even use her full name. Blog = internets= free territory for everyone to dump their mind contents to. Whoever suspended her is an idiot. You have students who can rage about their teachers on their Facebooks or w/e and not be suspended, and as soon as an adult does it, it's considered suspension worthy? Double standard here methinks.

MiSSHaku Wrote:Students at my school have been suspended over actions on Facebook. :X

Quote:The 16-year-old from Penn Valley, Pa. claims Matsko showed him photos remotely taken with the built-in webcam on his MacBook, according to the suit.

In the photos, the teen was allegedly holding two pill-shaped objects, says Robbins' attorney Mark Haltzman. School officials believed they were drugs, while the family maintains they were simply Mike-N-Ike candy.

"They were trying to allege that…those were pills and somehow he was involved in selling drugs," Halzman said Friday.

Quote:If the allegations of spying prove to be true, Blake may not be the only victim. Other students claim they've seen their webcam go live while off school grounds and worry they've been spied on too.

“Occasionally a green light would go on, on your computer which would kind of give you the feeling that somebody’s watching you,” Harriton High School student Drew Scheier told NBC Philadelphia Thursday.

Corn Wrote:Uses ass and pineapple a couple of times.

Anonymous Moose Wrote:The word pineapple is only used once by the teacher in the specific link you gave.
"Rude, beligerent, argumentative pineapple."

The 6 other cases of "pineapple" are in the comments.