Reaction to "Moral Spaces in MySpace"

My knee-jerk reaction as I begun this article was faint horror. From day one, we're told that we're always on an interview, and I know that's true. I have a friend who had to leave a teaching program because of some of the personal choices she made, in a space that was certainly not school-related. So, from the get go, I try to be wary.

At the same time, I know that there are pictures of me drinking beer and having a good time on Rachel C's facebook page. Will anyone see those? I've got no idea, but I often think that I should ask her to take them down.

At the same time, I know a number of teachers with facebook accounts. I know that facebook is "safer" than MySpace, for example, people can only see more than your profile picture if you select them, but at the same time...

Things change, and the internet has a very long memory.

To move it away from myself, what is my role as a teacher?

A short story:

In my second period Reading Essentials class we used a class blog (we actually used a blog in all of our classes). We were a small class, all boys (four or five, depending on the day). Most of the way through the quarter, we get a new student who had been kicked out of her old school.

When we have students join the class, we have them do an "about me" blog post. This student was quite skilled with teh internets and linked a picture of herself from her MySpace account.

It was rather revealing and suggestive (I hear, I never saw it myself), and it included a link, so that everyone could be her MySpace friend.

Jim pulled the picture and erased the link, which was good, because this was at school, and under the school conduct code. Actually, if he was feeling peckish, he could have sent her to her discipline person and no one would have batted an eyelash.

His decision was not to talk to her about it unless it showed up again. His reasoning was that she was likely an abuse victim (there were more signs than just the picture) and that cracking down wasn't going to help anything.

Pretty complex thoughts there. He was considering his role as a teacher, understanding that MySpace is a public space, and still repsecting her privacy, while using the information to support other information that he was getting about the student, building a mental file, if you will.

Fun stuff.