I should have heeded my husband's apprehension and our friends' advice, but I wanted that house. Because Ron and I were public school teachers and supported public education, we ignored our friends' warnings and enrolled our daughters in Marion's school system. A year later I transferred to the Marion system from Florence where I had developed two educational programs: the itinerant learning disabilities program and a self-contained middle school class for emotionally disturbed juvenile delinquents. In Marion, I was assigned to two schools as a learning disabilities clinician. Within weeks of my transfer, my first encounter with the establishment made me acutely aware that the warnings of our friends were accurate. Almost four decades since the landmark decision in Pickering v. Board of Education, 1968, many teachers still cannot criticize their school system without fear of retaliation. When author Maggi Hall, a veteran public school teacher, wrote a letter to the newspaper in Marion County, South Carolina, criticizing her school district, she didn't realize that one day she would be called upon to defend the cornerstone of democracy itself-the First Amendment.

I should have heeded my husband's apprehension and our friends' advice, but I wanted that house. Because Ron and I were public school teachers and supported public education, we ignored our friends' warnings and enrolled our daughters in Marion's school system. A year later I transferred to the Marion system from Florence where I had developed two educational programs: the itinerant learning disabilities program and a self-contained middle school class for emotionally disturbed juvenile delinquents. In Marion, I was assigned to two schools as a learning disabilities clinician. Within weeks of my transfer, my first encounter with the establishment made me acutely aware that the warnings of our friends were accurate. Almost four decades since the landmark decision in Pickering v. Board of Education, 1968, many teachers still cannot criticize their school system without fear of retaliation. When author Maggi Hall, a veteran public school teacher, wrote a letter to the newspaper in Marion County, South Carolina, criticizing her school district, she didn't realize that one day she would be called upon to defend the cornerstone of democracy itself-the First Amendment.