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If you're a teacher in Ohio, you'd better think twice before you answer, because it's not a hypothetical question. According to the Columbus Dispatch, the state's teacher's unions recommend that teachers not post profiles on social networking or online dating sites because it could lead to the appearance of improper relationships with students.
What's next? Police officers prohibited from posting hook-up invitations on craigslist lest it appear they are hooking on the side? Firefighters advised not to enter a members-only adult community, in case some old biddy sees an episode of Primetime Live and accuses them of cyberperversions?
I suppose it's a step forward that we're not so much Protecting the Children as we are protecting the teachers against a serious, if groundless, backlash against the internet's role in modern relationships. But advising teachers to avoid social networking or online dating is not only a pointless prohibition, it works to the detriment of their skills as educators.
All adults who work with youth should be aware of how young people communicate, fall in love and stay connected; I encourage teachers to try social networking services, to have a blog, to text message with their own families and friends. Experienced teachers will not only gain a better sense of the world their students live in -- indeed, a world their students are creating -- they will have a greater understanding of the young teachers entering the profession.
That's right. In case you hadn't noticed, the internet generation is graduating to the work force. I doubt a 23-year-old, freshly minted teacher is going to stop interacting online simply because she has begun a Grown-Up Career! Besides, considering the pay scale for first-year teachers, the internet will be the only entertainment she can afford for a while. (Not that she'll have time for more than the occasional tweet, given her new workload.)
It's wrong for high school teachers to get involved romantically or sexually with students, and with very, very few exceptions, teachers should not even be friends with students. Those things are already prohibited, no matter how you do it -- cell phone, detention closet, handwritten notes.
But teachers who understand appropriate relationships with students are not going to "friend" teens on MySpace, text message youth about their sex lives or hook up with minors in role-playing games. Teachers who want to act like they're still on the other side of the desk -- whether to live out a fantasy of finally joining the popular crowd, or to "support" students by acting like peers, or even to make sexual advances -- will do so regardless of technological means. (At least if they choose to use technology, their overtures will be documented and available as evidence.)
Social networking, online dating and even uploading a pornographic video of oneself to an adults-only online performance space has nothing to do with one's students and everything to do with one's personal life and sexuality. Holding teachers up to a "higher standard" -- symbols of an "ideal purity" that the rest of us are relieved we don't have to attain -- is not only impossible, it works against our goal of helping young people mature into responsible adults.
Every adult who uses social networking and online dating sites should do so responsibly, regardless of profession. An intelligent person doesn't brag about his Sunday morning hangovers where his boss can read it or post explicitly sexual pictures on an all-ages site and expect it to have no repercussions on his career. Casting aside the cloak of sexual shame and secrecy does not mean anything goes, all the time, anywhere! Discretion and openness are not mutually exclusive.
See you in a fortnight,
By Regina Lynn
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