honoluluadvertiser.com

Sponsored by:

Comment, blog & share photos

Log in | Become a member
The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Thursday, November 13, 2008

Teachers learning the hard way about who reads Facebook posts

 •  More students take ACT, SAT

By Ann Doss Helms
McClatchy-Tribune News Service

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — A Thomasboro Elementary teacher faces firing for posting derogatory comments about students on Facebook.

Four other Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools teachers have been disciplined for posts involving "poor judgment and bad taste," spokeswoman Nora Carr said Tuesday.

WCNC, the Charlotte Observer's news partner, turned up questionable pages on the social networking site by searching for people who identified themselves as employees of the schools.

The Thomasboro teacher listed "teaching chitlins in the ghetto of Charlotte" as one of her activities and drinking as one of her hobbies.

In her "About Me" section she wrote: "I am teaching in the most ghetto school in Charlotte."

Most of Thomasboro's students are minorities from low-income homes. The teacher has been suspended with pay, and Superintendent Peter Gorman has recommended firing her, Carr said. The dismissal is not final because teachers have a right to appeal.

Reporter Jeff Campbell of WCNC said he showed district officials pages involving seven local teachers. Carr said four faced discipline that is less than suspension or dismissal. She would not provide details about the offensive material, but the pages Campbell submitted included photos of female teachers in sexually suggestive poses.

School officials are reviewing the case of a high-school teacher who used a Facebook "mood box" to post "I'm feeling p — ed because I hate my students!"

District officials are working on a memo reminding all 19,000 employees that information they post on the Web can be viewed by the public and should be appropriate.

"When you're in a professional position, especially one where you're interacting with children and parents, you need to be above reproach," Carr said.

The teachers in question chose to identify their employer and skipped an option that blocks public viewing of their pages. "That's kind of mind-boggling," Carr said.

Teachers across the country have faced similar situations — enough so that NEA Today, the journal of the National Education Association, earlier this year published a roundup. It included a Colorado teacher fired for posting her sexually explicit poetry, a Florida band director fired for a MySpace profile that included "his musings about sex, drugs and depression," and a Virginia art teacher fired for posting photos of his "butt art," done by painting his private parts and pressing them onto canvas.