nice discussion. thanx for sharing my blog post here.
a few points of clarification. the teacher in question is a substitute teacher. not on staff. she's also the mother of a student there (pretty common at this school -- it's a charter school, earthier and crunchier than most).
the 3-day suspension rule is a bit extreme, I agree. but schools are very concerned about bullying and harassment online, so they're taking a hard stance. I can see why. there was another incident at this very school where one student started a facebook group with the title "XXX XXX is gay" (substitute a 7th grader's name for XXX XXX). he did it as a joke, but he got a 3-day suspension for it.
it's a real problem, and there aren't any easy solutions. saying "don't use facebook" isn't gonna work. the kids will use it, regardless. and at that age they really don't understand the implications.
This is ridiculous. Once the children are off school property they no longer have a teacher/child relationship. The teacher is a citizen at that point and should have the same recourse as a citizen (e.g. alert the police if a fight is going to take place off school property). Suspending children for something they do on social networks on their own time? These teachers should lose their teaching licenses.
a few points of clarification. the teacher in question is a substitute teacher. not on staff. she's also the mother of a student there (pretty common at this school -- it's a charter school, earthier and crunchier than most).
the 3-day suspension rule is a bit extreme, I agree. but schools are very concerned about bullying and harassment online, so they're taking a hard stance. I can see why. there was another incident at this very school where one student started a facebook group with the title "XXX XXX is gay" (substitute a 7th grader's name for XXX XXX). he did it as a joke, but he got a 3-day suspension for it.
it's a real problem, and there aren't any easy solutions. saying "don't use facebook" isn't gonna work. the kids will use it, regardless. and at that age they really don't understand the implications.
cheers,
dt