At a certain point, though, this’ll happen more and more and, as is, everyone’s tendency, someone will ask themselves, how can we improve this? That’s gonna be a fun day for hardworking teachers everywhere.

(I’m going somewhere non-obvious with this… wait for it.)

The bigger the audience, the tighter your argument has to be. Someone out there is going to disagree with your position and try to poke holes in it. So all the stuff about hygiene, the booty stuff, the bunny ears, all that undermines the case. Which, judging from the “organization” section of the video and her interactions with students, is a pretty good case against her professional abilities. But I suspect that they could have done much better. I mean, I still wish I had my high school chemistry teacher on video when he said that a gram was more than an ounce. Even kids that didn’t smoke weed were busting up. The point is, those are the moments you gotta grab if you’re really trying to expose a bad teacher. Now I don’t support that route, but if you (as a student) going into battle at least come well-equipped.

Otherwise, it’s just cheap entertainment at the expense of your school’s opportunities at self-improvement. The reason to make a video about a teacher (other than adoration, of course) is to expose them to the world. There ought to be a point to that action, beyond just shouting across the internets that you don’t like the teacher or find her gross. I’d like to see what happens when a responsibly-made student video shows up and exposes a really bad teacher. Then we’d have two examples to hold up next to each other and discuss why one is effective and the other one just generates lawsuits over suspensions.

H, that’s a good tack for a teacher to take when students start trash-talking a colleague, but not good-enough. Discussing the failings of other teachers gets students’ anger off w/out any responsibility-taking or result-making. It provides this channel into which they empty their frustration, the only obligation of which is that the frustration be “constructive.”

They head back to their class, back to the offending teacher, stronger than before, more united in their offense, not less, because of the constructively critical teacher’s involvement. If the offending teacher is struggling, banging her head against the boards trying to figure things out, that involvement is taking her miles backward.

Maybe you get them to confront the teacher or, probably better, type an anonymous letter transcribing all the constructive criticism discussed, but entertaining student negativity without redirecting it somewhere positive (simultaneously boosting your cred with your students) makes me feel slimy.

anon, I’m 100% unsure how to answer your comment. Proceeding tentatively: I guess I agree that teachers rarely sort themselves into Exceptional and Terrible categories. However, the real offense here isn’t mediocrity, it’s the lack of ambition to improve oneself. And we’re not talking Herculean improvements that cut out leisure time either.

I guess where I dispute the hair stylist, shoe salesman, dentist analogy is that the expected outcome of their jobs is so vastly different from ours. So your beehive haircut is off center, your shoes don’t fit, or you’ve still got some plaque left on that molar. When teachers are inadequate, lives get appreciably worse.

YouTube should have been a final resort here — after confronting the teacher, talking to parents, talking to the administration, cc’ing a note to the superintendent, etc. — but I think it’s high time for the work environment to become hostile to the contentedly mediocre teacher.

Todd, your question’s going to become less theoretical as more of these videos crop up.

I think it would be great (as a future teacher) to be taped ALL the time. I’d love to be able to go back to the tape (not that anyone has enough time to do this a whole lot) — I’d also love to have it to show parents as needed. But, I can always act like I’m being taped and put on the best performance I can. I also promise to shower and not be as messy at school as I am at home. ;-D