Teachers and Social Media: An Unsolved Issue
By: Corbin Chandler and Jessica Cardona
Social media has only been around truly for the past fifteen years, and the lines between real life and the internet are still extremely blurry. This is a problem, one that people in power often have issues with. Teachers and administrators, those in charge of helping the next generation rise to adulthood, are not exceptions to this rule. Many may believe their social media accounts are separate from their school lives, but the point is that no matter how simply you represent yourself online, students will still be able to find your accounts. Simple internet searches can reveal social media accounts, even if they are marked as private. Some teachers’ profiles exposed over the past few years have caused teachers and administrators to be fired, found to contain materials deemed inappropriate like showing photographs of them with alcohol.This is an issue that needs to be resolved, and strict guidelines need to be placed in order to protect from scandal brought up over blurry guidelines. This is not an issue that should hold lots of grey areas-- this needs to be a black and white issue.
What does this mean for teachers’ public profiles that contain inappropriate material? One Florida school has removed a teacher from her classroom for allegedly alluding that segregation was a logical or okay occurrence, as well as other racist and white supremacist-like speech. She hosted a Podcast called “Unapologetic” in which she interviewed a person named Lana Lokteff, a known white supremacist. They are said to have spoken about how some races were better than others in relation to IQ and other unsettling topics referring to white supremacy. This teacher has not been fired or suspended for her blatantly racist statements. This is because her statements were said on social media under a fake name and under the fabricated guise of “satire” (not mentioned in the podcast but claimed later on). Is this acceptable?
No, it is not. Children are around teachers more than they are around their parents. Because of this, teachers serve as important role models in a child's life. While they are primarily responsible for a student's educational development, they also end up teaching students about morals. Before social media, it was relatively easy for anyone, including teachers, to exude morality at work and forgo that persona at home. Now, the threat of being exposed as a hypocrite is much more real. Teachers, along with other professionals, should think before they share contentious materials. The precarious decisions that they make on social media may hurt their career, as well as their reputation.