Week 29 - Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

Activity 5: Legal and ethical contexts in my digital practice

This week we are thinking about ethical dilemmas in particular in relation to social media.  Within our school most teachers have a personal facebook page, as do many of our students.  My personal decision has been that my personal facebook page is for me only and I don't accept any friend requests from students or parents. At the request of some of my former students who want to stay in touch, I've created a separate "Miss Hatch" facebook page that I will accept friend requests from students on.  However, other teachers in our school accept friend requests from students and parents and use this as a way to communicate with them.  On one occasion, at a party where there were several teachers from school one teacher took photos of teachers drinking (several of them had been drinking a fair amount) and posted them on facebook, tagging in teachers.  Even though a lot of teachers don't accept requests from students, the fact that some of the teachers tagged did have students on their facebook caused some issues.   Eventually the teacher was asked to remove the photos and now it is an understanding in our school that we ask each other if we are going to post anything that could be viewed as inappropriate to facebook or any other kind of social media.

Even though these photos were taken outside school and only showed teachers engaging in activities that were legal and not inappropriate we felt that they weren't appropriate for students to see as it could be considered that drunken photos on social media that students can access appears unprofessional and could breach the commitment to the profession as stated in the Code of Ethics for Certified Teachers which states "teachers shall exert every effort to maintain and raise professional standards, to promote a climate that encourages the exercise of professional judgement, and to achieve conditions which attract persons worthy of trust to careers in education."  As teachers we need to be aware of the influence we have over students and particularly when dealing with emerging adolescents, we need to set a good example to them.  While they are fully aware that teachers are humans and are perfectly allowed to drink alcohol, it's unprofessional for those pictures to be accessible to them.