CB Teacher Reactivates Blog

Suspended CB East teacher Natalie Munroe has reactivated her personal blog, and is using it to explain her side of what happened last week.

In it, she says she stands by what she wrote about her students at the high school in Buckingham. She says her comments were taken out of context, and she's glad the post started a conversation about the state of education today.

For starters, she notes that her blog has just a handful of "followers," nine to be exact, and two of them were her and her husband. So what was meant for a small group of friends got to a much larger audience and, from her perspective, taken out of context.

From her blog:

"What bothers me so much about this situation is that what I wrote is being taken out of context. Of my 84 blogs, 60 of them had absolutely nothing to do with school or work. Of the 24 that mentioned it, only some of them were actually focused on it--others may have mentioned it in passing, like if I was listing things that annoyed me that day and wrote without any elaboration that students were annoying that day."

She also addresses the post that led to her becoming headline news and the negative backlash:

"Contrary to what seems to be popular belief, I didn't--and don't--feel negatively toward all students. As I mentioned in another blog that nobody chooses to talk about, there were delightful students in school, too. I fondly discussed some wonderful students who shined in the school's Jazz and Poetry Festival, and I even said that I was proud to be part of the school at events like that."

She writes that it has been blown out of proportion but she says that she's glad there is an open discussion about the state of education.

When writing about the aforementioned post, she adds "Parents don't want to hear the truth; administrators don't want us to share the truth," then later goes on to write "... the fact remains that every year, more and more, students are coming in less willing to work, to think, to cooperate. These are the students I was complaining about in my blog."

As for the fallout, she concludes by writing:

"There are serious problems with our education system today--with the way that schools and school districts and students and parents take teachers who enter the education field full of life and hope and a desire to change the world and positively impact kids, and beat the life out of them and villanize them and blame them for everything--and those need to be brought to light. If this 'scandal' opens the door for that conversation, so be it."

Read her blog here.

We will update this story throughout the day.