Even though I have not taught high school in four years, I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night terrified that I forgot to prepare lesson plans for the day that would soon be arriving. I lie in bed in a state of half-slumber mentally developing a ninety-minute plan to excite high school seniors about the electoral college. The gnawing pain in my stomach is eventually enough to wake me up fully. I take a deep sigh of relief and realize that I am no longer a public school teacher. I used to have the same 3:00am problem when waiting tables at Chilis. I would actually put on my fabulous burgandy polo and navy blue apron before coming to my senses and reminding myself that I did not leave a customer there without his turkey sandwich.

Anyway, my latest night sweats over teaching led me to think about a specific incident that caused quite the stir. When I began my employment with the school system that hired me, we were told that our email accounts were to be used for professional reasons only (correspondence with parents, planning with other teachers, subscribing to daily updates from E! Online, etc). I used my school email account for its intended purpose and maintained great communication with parents about upcoming exams, the distribution of grades and other tidbits that the students did not want mom and dad to know. However, there were many other teachers in the system who I believed were abusing the email access. Not a day went by that I did not receive several forwards with cute teddy bears, enlightening stories about how the gruff businessman learned his job wasn’t nearly as hard as that of a teacher or advertisements for used trucks. I even got quite a few prayer chains with pictures of Jesus.

If these teachers wanted to share a favorite forward of a dancing penguin with other friends on the faculty who would be receptive, then I would support their desire to email to their heart’s content. But, these people were sending nonsense to every teacher in the county!

After a particularly bad afternoon of deleting annoying emails, I decided to take action. I sent my own email to the entire county, and I included the administration in the recipient list. I wrote that our email should be used for professional purposes only and that I did not want to receive an email with “Jingle Bells” rewritten about the harried life of teachers. We are fighting to be taken seriously as a profession on par with others that require certification (such as medicine and law), but I can’t imagine a doctor sending out an email letting every other doctor in a hospital know what her favorite color says about her personality.

The responses were about three to one against me. One woman wrote to me to let me know she would be praying for me because I was obvious unhappy and bitter. Another teacher told me that she couldn’t get through her crazy day without funny forwards to cheer her up (which I found quite unfortunate). Others were happy that someone finally spoke up and assured me that I had plenty of support.

There were parts of being a teacher that I loved, and I took the education of my students seriously. I tried to share my passion for government with them every day. I spent hours grading and commenting on papers (I made them write A LOT) and planning creative ways to teach new concepts. Occasionally, through email, I would pass along an amusing story to my friends on the staff. However, I did not impose spinning smiley faces on several hundred teachers who I assumed were as busy as me. That is just plain unprofessional.