I'm updating a few days early this week because I'm not sure if I'll be able to make my normal Saturday update on account of graduation that day. That's right, folks, I'll finally have that BA in liberal studies with a concentration in writing that I've been claiming in my query letters (I figured with a month or so left before graduation, I could basically say that I had a degree, right?). On top of the ceremony and subsequent celebrations, I'm also getting kicked out of the dorms, showing my parents around Anchorage and getting ready for a flight back to Colorado. Busy, busy, busy.
This week, I'm also going to skip an excerpt (though I assure you, I've been working very hard; I rewrote an entire chapter and, after months of mucking about in the Land of the Unmotivated, that was a very big deal), and talk about this article. For those who won't click on the link: basically, a high school English teacher was found to be writing and publishing erotica on the side. I, personally, am not a huge fan of erotica, but I fail to see how in the world it should affect this teacher's classroom. She didn't expose the students to it, use them in the book, or even talk about it until some parent found out and flipped. Doesn't a teacher have a right to her own life, too? I mean, they have homes and private space for a reason. Right? Okay, I can understand bringing a teacher under fire if he or she is having an affair with a student, or is dealing drugs to the students, or is a mass murderer or something, but for writing something she enjoys writing? And under a pseudonym, no less!
In all honesty, this kind of freaks me out. If I were to become a teacher for any reason (not likely, but let's roll with it), and some parent found out I write gay romance, could I be brought under fire for preaching homosexuality? Even if I only wrote on my own time, never talked about it with the students, never brought the school into it, etc. etc.? When did asking teachers to separate their school lives and their private lives become asking them to deny their private lives, their desires and goals, altogether? It just doesn't seem right to me.
Oljiru kovy.
I agree with you about the article--that's messed up. Major congratulations on graduating!!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Jess! Hopefully not having to deal with homework and whatnot will help get me back into my writing groove.
ReplyDeleteWhile it's scary that such a fuss was raised, it also looks like she's getting plenty of community support.
ReplyDeleteBah, that's really stupid...she has the right to write or do whatever she wants, as long as she doesn't involves her students into it (and as it seems, she didn't do it).
ReplyDeleteI for instance would find it interesting to have a teacher who wrote things like that xD Yeah, I'm not an example...
But anyway, 10th grade there, as I searched, has students around 15-16 years old...
In a world were youngs are introduced to sex earlier and earlier, I think 15-16 years old probably already heard of the matter or already had it, so it's not like they are "poor kids" that are being exposed to something unknown to them.
Just ranting, I don't know if the point of view is so different in the US.