Teacher Tattling!

If you have friends who are educators, they are not okay. Most of them can tell you stories about a colleague who was disciplined for something that had nothing to do with education and happened outside of work. This trend of "teacher tattling" is concerning especially since online resources and social media are quickly becoming classroom tools. One of the reasons many educators shy away from the use of technology is that they are fearful that it will come back and bite them in the butt. There is a lot of concern surrounding what people will do with student data, but I am interested in looking at privacy from the teacher standpoint.

For educators the line between professional and personal has been blurred for a long time. As a new teacher I was cautioned against using any type of social media, and was once warned because I was seen buying wine in the grocery store. This legacy has been around for a long time. For some reason people feel like teachers don't have the right to be real people. Now by no means am I saying that it's okay to post things that are inappropriate on social media, but I don't think that I should be held to a higher standard as an educator. If everyone else can post a picture of drinks with the ladies, why should I not have the same right.

This line gets even more blurry when we factor in the required use of technology. Technology has a way of making people feel like they have a right to access you and your personal life. I think it will be difficult to keep personal and professional accounts separate. Do I want to have two instagrams, twitter accounts, facebook pages, etc? No of course I don't. It will be difficult to fully incorporate social media as a tool in the classroom until the idea of personal/professional privacy is addressed. Until then we will continue to have educators who push back and revert to older ways of delivering instruction.

Comments

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Tired Teacher

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