If you have ever seen the movie Friday, starring Ice Cube, you may have heard the phrase “fired on your day off”. In the movie Craig (Ice Cube), steals some boxes from his job while he is off the clock, and it results in him losing his job. While it may seem like something pretty hard to accomplish, if you are a business professional of any sort including an educator, misusing social media can earn you a spot right next to Craig in the unemployment line.
As Americans, we have rights to free speech. In fact, that is our first amendment right. However, when it comes to being an educator things can get a little dicey. Teachers cannot just post whatever they would like on the internet and say “it’s their right”. In fact, there are a few court cases to help prove this.
- Jeffery Spanierman was terminated from his job because of two conversations he had on MySpace with his students. After a back-and-forth banter about a student and his girlfriend the student replied “don’t be jealous because you don’t get any” to which Mr. Spanierman replied “what makes you think I want any. Im not jealous. I just like to goof and have fun with you guys. If you don’t like it, kiss my BRASS. LMAO”. While many readers might feel that this doesn’t seem egregious, courts ruled that this “was likely to disrupt school activity” and that Mr. Spanierman did not “maintain a professional, respectful association with students”. (https://www.ctemploymentlawblog.com/uploads/file/hughes.pdf)
- In 2009, Ashely Payne, a fresh 24 year old teacher went on a trip to Europe for the summer before the school year started. Like many others who visit famous breweries and wineries, Ms. Payne uploaded pictures of herself drinking wine and Guinness beer. After receiving an anonymous email about the photos, Payne was forced to either be fired or resign from her job. (https://www.ajc.com/news/local/ruling-goes-against-barrow-teacher-who-lost-job-over-facebook-posting/yhQhGPbZiYkH5HYjb34byJ/)
- Another way a teacher can get fired is by sharing too much personal information about their classroom on the internet. Sometimes the stress of being an educator can be very real, but that does not mean students need to be tweeted, posted, or talked about online to anyone for any reason.
Sharing pictures of your students, posting private classroom information, and contacting students online are all easy ways to kiss your job goodbye. Although these reasons for being fired may seem harmful to some and harmless to others, one way to ensure you can keep your job and keep social media is by following these 10 rules:(https://www.americanboard.org/blog/10-social-media-rules-for-teachers/)
- Know your schools guidelines.
- Do not friend or follow any student on personal accounts.
- Keep your profile clean.
- Do not affiliate yourself with your school on your personal profile.
- Never geo-tag your schools location.
- Remember a “snapchat” can always be screenshot.
- Set Instagram accounts to private.
- Never mention your school in any post.
- Never complain about your job online.
- NEVER POST PICTURES OF, INTERACT WITH, OR MESSAGE STUDENTS OVER SOCIAL MEDIA.
A majority of the ideas surrounding social media and being a teacher may seem like common-sense, but, of course we will always have the cases where things fall into gray area. Being a teacher and having social media accounts may seem like a fine line between freedom of speech, and being an education professional. The best advice I have read since researching this topic: If you wouldn’t wear it, say it, or do it in your classroom than you probably should not post it.
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