Blog Post 2

To a certain extent it is fair to judge teachers' private lives. Although teachers are free to do whatever they like outside of the classroom, they have to remember that they are role models for around thirty children at that time. Children look up to their teachers and often try to become just like them. If a student is at a restaurant for a Friday night family dinner and sees their teacher acting inappropriately, that could give the student the wrong idea. They see this adult that gives them their knowledge and that they admire acting poorly so they will think that it is acceptable. In addition, parents do not want to see the adult that spends most of the week with their children behaving in a non professional way. Teachers should be free to do whatever they please as long as it is in a setting where students and families will not be a witness to this. This includes both in the real world and online where private information is so easy to uncover these days.
Teachers should definitely have access to social networking sites. These sites allow teachers to communicate more efficiently with their co-workers and others. The one thing about these sites is that teachers should not have connections to their students and must maintain privacy on their sites. It is not right for teachers and students to be connected through sites such as facebook and myspace while they are still in a teacher/student relationship. As a teacher I would most likely take part in a social network that none of the students are not already participating in. I would dedicate this site entirely to the class so that no other posts or information would be shared other than class related work. I would also have any other social networks that I partake in completely private so that students would not be able to find me or access my site. With this process, the students and I would be able to communicate easily via social networks while avoiding any criticism of using them.