(Get) Outta My Facebook!

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Teachers Disciplined Over Facebook Comments

Teachers are not held to the same standards as other professionals. Since they are the ones who are in a position of authority and trust, their morals and ethics are put under much more scrutiny, especially since they are the ones who are teaching our children.

The lines get a little bit blurred now when it comes to privacy and propriety, especially when it concerns Facebook and other social networks. Is it appropriate for a high school teacher to be seen holding a beer at a social function? Is it okay if we see images of an elementary school teacher smoking with her friends? The levels of professionalism that we hold to these educators are much more stringent than other business individuals or workers in most other industries. It can be a gray area when it comes to understanding what is appropriate to publish on Facebook and what can be deemed inappropriate and subject to disciplinary action by school board officials.

But because of these circumstances, teachers should also be much smarter than everyone else, and should be self-censoring their own content, especially when it is fairly obvious that questionable images and comments will most certainly be made public. In one example, teachers of a Charlotte high school were disciplined for posting objectionable content and images on their Facebook profiles. Several teachers in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district were facing disciplinary action for posting such comments as “teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte”,  racial slurs, and posing in provocative poses.

When are people (including teachers) going to realize that Facebook is an open door, and that publishing this type of material on their Facebok profiles, their Twitter pages, or their personal blogs is just going to cause trouble? People need to remember that there really is no invasion of privacy when they freely post their content to public Internet websites such as Facebook. If teachers can’t understand these simple principles of information flow, then what does it say about our education systems???