Blog Entry 5                    "You're Fired!"

                               

         

       For my final entry, I wanted to do a little twist on the theme I have for blog on discipline in the education system by focusing on how teachers are disciplined for their conduct outside of school and whether or not there is validation to these punishments. In class we watched a YouTube video about a teacher who was fired for posted hateful comments about homosexuality to his Facebook page and I found it extremely interesting and I wanted to investigate more cases of teachers being punished, perhaps even fired, for the way they conduct themselves outside of the classroom. An opinion article in the Los Angeles Times describes many cases where teachers are being “fired or suspended for perfectly lawful activities during off-work hours when those activities are deemed inappropriate by parents or school officials." Some teachers were blogging about students, sending explicit text messages to their partner, holding alcoholic beverages in their hands in photos on Facebook or just caught in the background of a suggestive picture. At the end of the work day these teachers should be able to go back home and live their own life and do as they please. As long as they are not harming anyone, why should they be fired for what they do in their free time? Any other employee of another company, say for example Sobeys, would end their day at the end of their shift and not have to worry about complying to anyone’s rules, except the law, of course. Why should expect our teachers to always have their behavior in check and always be on the clock?