From the Washington Post, a feature about teachers who post crude and/or unprofessional things on public websites. Among them:

• A Montgomery County, Maryland, special education teacher who displayed a poster that depicts talking sperm and invokes a slang term for oral sex.
• A Prince William County, Maryland, teacher of students with emotional and learning disabilities who posted a “bumper sticker” saying “you’re a retard, but i love you.”
• An eighth grade teacher at a Fairfax County, Virginia, school who described her job as “rocking out with some deaf kids. it. is. AWESOME.” The school at which she teaches includes some students with hearing problems. The teacher described her comment as “sarcastic.”

Teachers caught with inappropriate Web sites could get a suspension for a first-time offense, said Michael Simpson, assistant general counsel for the National Education Association, a teachers union with more than 3 million members. If they can prove that no one at school complained about the page, then they might prevail in a personnel dispute “because there would be no evidence of any real or potential harm to the students or school,” he said.

If teachers claim free speech protection under the First Amendment, Simpson said, the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that governments can fire employees if their speech harmed the workplace’s mission and function.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 28th, 2008 at 4:53 am and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, special education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.