Tuesday afternoon, I had a conversation with my 11-year old brother about his day at school. We pretty much have these conversations daily and they never sieze to be entertaining. You see, his teacher (I'll call her Ms. Smith for privacy purposes) refers to herself as "Smith-zilla," often saying things like, "I didn't drink enough coffee this morning, so don't upset me or Smith-zilla will come out of her cave."
This being said, her teaching tactics aren't exactly conventional. But on Monday, my brother told me that over the weekend, Ms. Smith had sat down at her computer with a list of her 6th grade students and searched each one on Facebook. While looking, she found that one of her students did have a Facebook page. Since the page wasn't blocked or protected, she was able to read this student's wall-to-wall conversations and look at her pictures even though the two of them were not friends. Then on Tuesday morning, she confronted this student and shared what she had learned about her personal life.
At first I thought this was out of line and not something a teacher should be doing. But the more I thought about it I realized that she wasn't technically doing anything wrong. Teachers have rights to Facebook, as do students, so there isn't anything preventing teachers doing this, but should there be? Is this a morally wrong thing for teachers to do or do teachers have the right to do this? Is it an infringement on students' privacy?
The moral boundaries over the years have been so blurred that there is little separating teachers and students. I remember my mom telling me that when she was a kid, she didn't even know her teachers' first names. Now, students and teachers interact through social networking tools. This is how much our society has evolved over one generation.
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2 comments:
This is a really awkward situation, for everyone involved. To be honest, I am friends with my MoWo teacher from last year, and because she only rarely pops up on my news feed, I think little of it. For a sixth grader to have a facebook is just wierd, and frankly its also weird for a teacher to have one, excepting, perhaps, a very very young teacher who recently graduated Teacher School. For my mom, and I think many other adults, Facebook is not an "active" thing. My mom will not go look for friends from high school, but they will friend her. So what's the point of facebook for older people?
And how can we make it so you don't end up humiliating people you know, like your students?
I agree that that is an extreamly akward situation but in all fairness, the teacher didn't do anythng wrong. I think that a kid as young as sixth grade shouldn't have a facebook anyways, especially when they don't even know the dangers of keeping your profile public. I think some of the blame should go on the kids parents for allowing their child to have a facebook at such a young age without any privacy settings. Also, i think some of the blame should go on the teacher for being such a creep and looking up all of her students. That seems a bit sketchy to me. But in the end, i think it shows how much social networking sites can work against you, especially in a situation like this one.
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