Facebook or no? What should a teacher (or any of us do)?

Okay, the subject that has caught my interest this week is one that is in the media teachers and Facebook. Most recently on my new feed I ran across a story about a football coach in Maine that resigned because he posted a nude picture of himself to his very public Facebook account instead of somewhere only his girlfriend could see. Definitely not a shining moment for him in any way I’m sure. For one, posting naked pictures of yourself anywhere is just plain stupid, once it’s out there, it’s out there and you’re not going to be able to erase it entirely, someone someday will find it and it will come back to haunt you. Secondly if you are a public type person such as a teacher you have choices to make. I see three basic ones. You can either choose to have social networking and be friends with your students and parents you interact with and be sure everything you post is appropriate; which to be perfectly honest, you shouldn’t post anything you wouldn’t want your grandmother reading just because employers and others are using internet searches to help make decisions about hiring, promotions and even whether or not you can keep your job, no matter what it is. Secondly you could choose to enjoy social networking but not be friends with any of your students or their parents, this can be a challenge too quite honestly. And you should still think twice before you post anything, just because someone will see it and who knows who they’ll share it with. Or thirdly you can choose to not use any of the social media options available to you. This means you can’t use them to keep up with your friends, your former classmates, your family. Really this is a form of censorship. Some would argue that all three options are, but honestly the first two are just being good stewards of your online presence.

This coach is not the only one who has made mistakes on social websites, this article from NPR mentions others and urges teachers to stay away from Facebook, I guess it could be the best choice for some, but I personally don’t think that not utilizing Facebook at all is really a fair option for anyone. We don’t expect any other professions to not use it, so why limit teachers? To take it even further there is a Missouri law that they are working the kinks out of that school boards and others are seeing as forbidding teachers to interact with their students at all on Facebook, although from what I understand of it the law only forbids exclusive communication between teachers and students such as chatting. It doesn’t seem to forbid in any way publicly viewable conversations or interactions between teachers and students. Many districts were scrambling to put policies together last August to address this ruling, but a judge put it on hold to get further clarification so policies could be consistent and thought out rather that hastily thrown together chaos like they were looking to be.

So it comes down to, social media, worth it or no? I think so, especially if you keep in mind that no matter who you are or what you do that you should be very careful about what you post, because you never know for sure who will see it.