Teachers and Social Networking Sites

Beware of the “Drunken Pirate!”

Stacey Snyder was a 25 year old senior education major at Millersville University in Pennsylvania and was assigned to Conestoga Valley High School for her student teaching. During that time Snyder posted a photo of herself on MySpace clad in a pirate hat with a cup in her hand. She labeled the photo “Drunken Pirate” and told her students at the school about her web page. When school and university officials learned of Snyder’s MySpace photo, they took action. Conestoga High School terminated her student teaching assignment and the university refused to issue her education degree and did not recommend her for Pennsylvania state certification.  Snyder sued the university, claiming that her First Amendment rights had been violated. The case, Stacey Snyder, Plaintiff v. Millersville University (No. 07-1660) was heard in US District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on December 3^rd, 2008. The court ruled in favor of the university.

I share this story with you as more and more school districts are checking social networking sites of both current and prospective employees. Numerous other civil liberties cases involving teachers had made their way through the courts since the 1970’s. The essence of many if these cases is that teachers, by nature of their work are held to higher ethical standards than the general population. They have been entrusted with the lives and education of America’s youth and as such need to present a high moral and ethical posture in the public eye.  Social networking sites like Face Book, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc are not private.  Additionally, most posts in cyberspace are permanent and cannot usually be “unposted.”

At the university where I worked, the director of the Student Services Center developed a PowerPoint presentation about the dangers of teachers (or student teachers) posting material on social networking sites. If anything, please let this blog post be a reminder to you to clean up your social networking sites and to not invite your students to “visit” your pages. In this current politically charged environment, which is so hostile to teachers and the teaching profession, do not give the attackers any more ammunition.

A complete posting of the court decision can be found at:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/Decision%202008.12.03.pdf