Teacher bloggers who haven’t spent half (the waking half) of their lives on the internet might not realize that there are mean people out there who can leave foul comments on their blogs and write unkind things about them elsewhere. Elementary teachers, though they spend vast amounts of their day teaching children to be nice to each other, might be surprised to see how frequently those lessons are disregarded when their students mature.

So what should we do when someone dumps on us on the internet? There is no easy answer to this question. If we are confrontational and judged rude in return, we condemn ourselves to additional derision. We feel lousy. We may even want to quit blogging. If we ignore the affront, we face a similar outcome. It is difficult to respond to mudslinging without getting a little bit dirty also. I’ve not worked this part of the problem out. I apologize to my regular readers in advance.

When this situation presented itself to me a while back I was not prepared for it, and I still feel that I handled it poorly. But I was heartened by the support that I got from the other bloggers who I’d come to know and trust. I realized how alone and emotionally vulnerable we are without friends who will stand with us when things get ugly. This tribal loyalty is dismissed as an echo chamber by the opposing camp, who believe that theirs is somehow composed of real noise.

This unpleasantness recently occurred on the blog of someone who has come to be a frequent correspondent of mine. She is a dedicated and responsible person. And she wrote a heartfelt lament about the effects that current education policy was having on her classroom. Her remarks were not directed at any person. Yet someone who she did not know took it upon himself to criticize her in roughshod fashion.

This treatment, I know, can have a chilling effect. And to demonstrate my solidarity, I stand with Sarah and any other teachers who simply want to tell their stories.

I responded to a comment at When the hurly-burly’s done. I said, I haven’t read your blog until today, but I want to say that I appreciate your awareness of the harm that toxic rhetoric can do to productive discussion. I’m proud to count myself among “Sarah’s back-patting cronies”…

Once Dan figured out who I was talking about, he proceeded to get everything else wrong.

Sarah…displays model emotional truthfulness — the heart’s out on the sleeve there — but dismal intellectual honesty….

And I’m to honor her “mere frustration?”

Meanwhile, I drafted Biggie Smalls (a title which embarrasses me more the more grossly it’s misinterpreted), with each revision attempting to excise the florid, incendiery prose that made Sarah’s rant such a disappointment to read. Your reading of my post indicates that I want to “silence opposing points of view,” a reading which is selective at best.

I make it clear from the first paragraph that it matters to me less “what you believe on NCLB (whether to scrap it or keep it), rather why you believe it and how you go about believing it.”

….I could only conclude that your reading of my post represents your own sympathies much better than it does the post itself.

At the end of Biggie Smalls, I ask for an elevation of discourse. That post was carefully constructed to critique the delivery of an ideology rather than the ideology itself and I can’t work up much regret over it.

Since Dan has anointed himself spokesman and style monitor for the “ cross-section of eager, hardworking young teachers“… I say,

Do not read on. It will disappoint you. As you can see, I live in an echo chamber. I live in an echo chamber.

NCLB is manifestly pseudoscience.

I don’t care what or why Dan believes anything (to paraphrase him). But I do care how he chooses to engage people who have my deepest respect. All readings are selective, and I read Dan’s “lack of regret” for attacking a teacher over a disagreement about education policy as a demonstration of his self absorption. He chose not to read Sarah’s intent, and instead focused on her delivery. Meanness has never elevated a discussion.

A deeper commitment to better listening is essential in order for technology to fulfill its promise of bringing the world together in real terms.

We can make a difference in the world by learning to listen better and by telling others about better listening. But only if they listen. (Michael Webb)

Dan might need a time-out to think about this.