"Finally read your blog." That's Reggie, older sister talking. "All it'd take is one phone call," she says, warning. "It'd be a spectacularly mucky end to a brilliant teaching career. Is that how you want to be remembered?"
Of course she won't make that call. But someone else might, out of the goodness of its heart, in my school's best interest, naturally. And perhaps because I'm a smart-arse who's had it coming and they've been waiting for just this opportunity.
I've been sobered - well, not literally - and sphincter-clenching since I read a brief report in this week's Age about Natalie Munroe who was suspended from teaching because of her blog. Of course, this was in the US, and in Oz we're a bit more relaxed, but I just got this feeling. Sounded like her blog was remarkably similar to my own, perhaps minus the expletives, which I thoroughly enjoying writing. (Oh-oh. Done it again.) Munroe got hung out to dry for far less, from what I can tell.
I've also noticed that one of my followers (and you know who you are, my witty friend!) is only a couple of clicks away from inadvertently betraying my precious anonymity. Thought I'd get done a few years back when one of my posts was published in a national teaching magazine. Happily, no one twigged to that one and my secret remained safe.
As I've said before, blogging is therapy and writing all that nasty stuff and turning it blackly humorous is illicitly thrilling - graffiti taggers get the same thrill, I'm told, as they darkly dart around defacing our burbs with their stupid black scrawl. That's not a bad analogy, actually, because while I'm venting, I'm also betraying my colleagues. And okay, they sort of deserve it, but I'd be mortified, and probably sacked, if I hurt such well-meaning, albeit boring people by lampooning them for my own psycho-therapeutic purposes.
So, unlike Hamlet, I've made a decision. I've deleted the blogs that could get me sent down. I dare say there will be others, cos the teaching world keeps throwing shit my way, and I have to deal with it somehow.
I'm not ready for retirement yet, dear sister Reggie. I'd miss the cut and thrust which abounds at my school.
And for anyone who cares to trawl back through the archives, there's still some stuff there, and if a certain person reads it and recognises his/herself therein, perhaps he/she will finally get the message and piss off.
3 comments:
Jeez, it's a mine field, isn't it? I have similar ethical dilemmas because the content of mine can be more "adult."
Nevertheless, can you really be identified? If you've not included your name then they can never be truly certain it's yours. Maybe it's a friend of yours who posts your rants?
Anyway, fingers crossed. So you didn't resign? Perhaps I haven't been keeping up.
Maybe the school should be supporting you becuase your little anonymous blog is preventing you from claiming stress-leave and other things like the necessity for counselling. . . .
GOod luck. Thinking of you.
Josie x
I shudder to think that there are people who have nothing better to do than dig for dirt on the net. Lighten up, paranoid and intensely bored snoops. We work hard; we play hard, and our muse is 'the word'. Ur only jealous that u can't capture the moment with such finesse. And fyi it is cheaper than therapy.
Love u, fraudy, keep up the o so good work.
Thanks, Josie and Jane. I didn't resign from teaching, just coordinating. Ironically, I got my first extra at the first possible time they could give it to me. I positively skipped to take it! And there's an extra yard duty. Suppose that's why I panicked about my blog. Now I don't have a special role - other than the job I'm meant to be doing: teaching - I'm expendable. And I'm bloody close to 'retirement age', as in months, not years away. Weird feeling. Cheers.
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