Social Networking

When I searched for myself on Google I had to dig through several pages before I actually found me. This really surprised me as I have a facebook and a myspace. Interestingly enough what the search pulled up was book reviews I have written on a book sharing website, Goodreads. I didn’t even think about the book reviews I have posted when I was searching. The link to one of my Goodreads reviews is: http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/795434-heather-campos. When I searched on the Pipl website, I again could not immediately find myself. My myspace page came up as the last one of 30, and my facebook never popped up. Again, I could find my goodreads profile and that was about it. I’m pretty happy about this finding. I am very aware of people looking at my social networking websites and I try to keep everything at maximum privacy because of that.

I have already gone through and edited my picture captions on facebook and myspace and I have re-read my book reviews to take out any expletives. I have an interesting sense of humor that some people might be offended by, so I made sure that all of those references were changed. Even though my pages are all set to private, I changed some parts in the “about me” sections just to be a little more politically correct than I was. I don’t think it is necessarily unbecoming of me as a person, but I do understand that teachers are held to a higher moral standard than regular ol’ Joe.

I do not think teachers should be held to community standards in their personal lives, but I know they are. I do realize that teachers are role models and should be in the classroom, but I also feel like it’s impossible to be good and moral ALL of the time. While it’s tempting to say it’s not fair to hold teachers to a higher standard, I cannot actually say that. Teachers know (or should know) what is and is not acceptable. It is up to them to censor themselves appropriately if they are going to use social networks; as parents, students and administrators can easily see that information. In terms of free speech, that should never be held against anyone, regardless of their occupation. Like I read in the article, the “First Amendment rights of a public employee are weighed against the ability of the government employer to maintain an efficiently run organization.” If my use of expletives on my facebook offends a student, that’s protected under the First Amendment. However, if I use expletives about parents in my school on my facebook, then I would expect some sort of disciplinary action. I did not know what was allowed and what was not and this helped clear it up for me.

To protect myself and my job I am going to make sure all my profiles are work safe. I will not post anything that I would not want my supervisor or my students to see. I have already started this by keeping private pages, only friending people I actually know, not allowing other people to “tag” me in pictures and erasing expletives or offensive words from my about me sections and picture captions.