Suspended Teacher in Facebook Incident Ignites Debate: Should Online Privacy for Educators Exist?

Schaffhauser’s article, "Suspended Teacher in Facebook Incident Ignites Debate: Should Online Privacy for Educators Exist?" Brought up some important interesting facts that all teachers need to think about and consider. This article touches on what some challenges may accompany sharing information on the internet. The teacher in this article made a comment on Facebook about the students in her class that was meant for her friends only, but ended up being seen publicly. The comment was hurtful, judgmental, mean, entirely inappropriate, and unprofessional.

According to Schaffhauser (2008), “The incident has generated a discussion among teachers, parents, administrators, and privacy advocates regarding free speech for teachers…” (Paragraph 5)   Many teachers have not considered that on a public forum like Facebook, what they say may be seen.  

According to Mike Simpson (2009), “…Many teachers believe they have the absolute First Amendment right to post anything they want on social networking sites, including party pix…Sadly, the courts say otherwise” (Paragraph 3 & 4). Many companies have employees sign contracts stating they must represent the company in a positive way even when not at work; maybe this is something school districts need to add to teacher’s contracts. This is a responsibility to the job of teaching just like holding a public office, it should be treated exactly the same.  I do believe that any company or school district should clearly state policies upon hiring an employee about exactly what expectations they hold on internet usage on and off of the job.

I personally did not know how limited teachers actually are in their speech until I read Mike Simpson (2009) which points out that in general, “Without going into the gory details, teacher free speech rights are fairly limited:  their speech is protected only if they speak out as citizens on “matters of public concern” and their speech doesn’t disrupt the school” (paragraph 12) This is a huge message that needs to be emphasized to teachers strongly, especially because we have become such technology users and may not think about the fact that anything placed on the internet is not truly private.

References:

Schaffhauser, D. (2008). Suspended Teacher in Facebook Incident Ignites Debate: Should Online Privacy  

    for Educators Exist? The Journal. http://www.thejournal.com/articles/23611

Simpson, M. (2009). Social networking nightmares, Cyberspeak no evil. In National Education Association.

    Retrieved October 5, 2011, from http://www.nea.org/home/38324.htm