Social Networking and Your Professional Future
Why You Should Be Careful What You Put on the Web
A West Virginia educational leader recently commented in a private online scoail network for teachers on how the Internet has created risks for new and prospective teachers: "Young teachers who have MySpace and Facebook accounts run the risk of having very personal information, party pictures, and other more revealing aspects of their lives being shared in the communities where they are newly employed."
Is there evidence to support that idea? Consider a Washington Post article from April, 2008.
Privacy in Social Networks
The Washington Post article begins by examining a flaw in Facebook, the second largest social network after MySpace. Teachers in the DC area thought their Facebook pages were private - that they could only be viewed by approved "friends." In fact they could be viewed by anyone who joined the same DC regional network as the teachers.
The Post story gives examples: a teacher whose Facebook page referred to oral sex using a slang term, a kindergarten teacher with a pornographic video on Facebook, and a teacher whose Facebook page included jokes about crack cocaine.
Facebook has fixed that privacy issue by doing away with regional networks. But that doesn't mean the personal information at your social networking page can't be hacked. Whether you're on Bebo, BlackPlanet, Classmates.com, Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, Twitter or some other social network, people you don't know see your information. That becomes even more true when someone is actually looking for your information...
Professional Consequences to Your Digital Footprint
Florida, Colorado, Tennessee and Massachusetts have released or suspended teachers over the content of their MySpace pages. Ohio has recently forbidden teachers from even having Facebook or MySpace pages (an issue certain to end up in court).
Many teachers don't fully understand that they can be removed from their teaching positions if their behavior outside school (including on the Web) makes them ineffective in the classroom. The courts will generally support a school system's decision to release a teacher under those circumstances even when they haven't committed a crime or some act of malfeasance.
That means that if the Flickr pictures of your bachelor party upsets parents enough, you may be out of a job. Your blog post about what it means to you to be a recovering alcoholic, or about how you first discovered that you were gay, or about your credit card debt and pending bankruptcy, or about your trip to Cancun - any of these has the potential make your personal life more important than the math you teach for parents and students. That situation could get you released from your job.
What the First Amendment Does (and Doesn't) Cover
Americans tend to think that the First Amendment means that they can say (or publish) whatever they want. But the U.S. Supreme Court recently ruled that governments can fire employees if their speech harms the mission and function of their workplace.
First amendment protection extends to speech that is in the public interest. Your thoughts and ideas on policy issues are probably protected. Your thoughts on your principal's wardrobe, or on her decision to give you playground duty instead of bus duty - those are more likely to be personal complaints that don't qualify for first amendment protection because there is no compelling public interest. Blogging about those things may not get you fired; but no law protects you when you do it.
Teachers in today digital age need to understand that what they do on the Internet could cost them their current job and adversely affect their entire career in teaching.
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