Pennsylvania English teacher fired over blog post

Pennsylvania English teacher Elizabeth Collins had been teaching at Notre Dame de Namur, an all-girls private school, in Villanova, PA for five years until she was recently fired over of a blog post. The teacher, who had blogged about her teaching experience numerous times over the past two years, criticized a student's political stance and tone during a presentation in February.

Though Collins did not use the student's actual name, that did not prevent the student's parents from becoming upset, confronting the teacher and demanding that the school take action. After the post became known the teacher removed the post. A series of responses back in forth from both parties, and a school meeting resulted in the teacher's dismissal in late April. Throughout the ordeal, Collins maintained that she felt she had not done anything wrong and was mainly criticizing the student's speech because it did not conform to what she had assigned in class.

In an interesting parallel, last Thursday Philadelphia judges were beginning more debate on two cases discussing whether students could be punished for posting inappropriate comments involving staff on MySpace from their home computers. While an original ruling allowed for suspension, another panel later decided that administrators could not "police" the Internet because the students made the comments on their home computers and not on school property.

Using these two stories as examples, it seems that school policies may need to be revamped to explicitly include Internet offenses; for example, districts may need to state in school handbooks/websites what consequences could happen if students post embarrassing/defaming comments about their teachers, and also what happens if a staff member posts information which could potentially embarrass or upset a student. If there are more consistent policies, then both teachers and students will know what type of comments may have harsh repercussions.

The Pennsylvania State Education Association does have a policy; on their website it states that teachers should not blog about their job, students, or co-workers. In this case, the comments on Collins' blog  were seemingly not to harm the student as she tried to be anonymous, but she did not keep her name or profession secret which made it easier to identify the student who was the subject of the blog post.

It has not been released how the student's parents gained knowledge of the blog post which anonymously mentioned their daughter. As of now, Collins says she is uncertain if she wants to remain in the teaching field, but is considering developing her own after school arts program.