On 4/11, at a School Board meeting, the Superintendent proposed a new social networking policy that included some very broad and alarming language. The Board accepted it, and it became a policy that officially governs my conduct as of 4/12. I posted my last entry on teaching philosophy the next day, since I had already worked on it and didn't want it to just disappear. I did post once after that, but just to share an assignment at a colleague's request.
Here's the language that chilled our willingness to use blog software to continue to discuss school policy and our teaching:
However, the Board will regulate the use of social media by employees, including employees’ personal use of social media, when such use... interferes with the work of the school district; ....disrupts the work of the school district; ...harms the goodwill and reputation of the school district.Suddenly, that was the school policy, and we were really concerned that our work on blogs, wikis, and twitter-style sites might violate this set of rules if our comments could be seen as critical of the district. For example, I've written on a number of occasions on the theme of class sizes at Staples (they are too large), and that kind of statement could be reasonably construed as harmful to the school district's reputation. Perhaps the policy does not intend to prevent teachers from honest, fair criticism of the district, but language is so broad that it does.
Pickering v. Board of Education (1968) affirmed the 1st amendment right of teachers to publicly criticize their school districts. The Supreme Court found that unless a teacher's comments interfere with the performance of their teaching duties, they are afforded the same protection as the comments of a member of the general public.
Despite the fact that the district's rules would not seem to hold up in court, and despite the fact that they were probably not intended to prohibit us from critiquing policies, the new language was enough to chill our speech. Any kind of formal reprimand is pretty crushing to a highly motivated teacher, and nobody wants to get into a legal battle, even if it's one you feel you should win.
There was another major sticking point in the policy for me, and this one had to do with some very broad language surrounding the personal use of social media by faculty members:
Employees are required to maintain appropriate professional boundaries with students, parents, and colleagues. For example, absent an unrelated special relationship (e.g., relative or family friend), it is not appropriate for a teacher or administrator to “friend” a student or his/her parent or guardian or otherwise establish special relationships with selected students through personal social media, and it is not appropriate for an employee to give students or parents access to personal postings unrelated to school.Good teachers understand the importance of professional boundaries. They protect the teacher as much as they protect the student or parent. I think pretty much any teacher in the district would agree that teachers should not start up inappropriate personal relationships with students or show favoritism to individual students. In fact, teachers need to exercise great care to avoid even the appearance of favoritism. But this paragraph also states in its last sentence that teachers cannot allow students and parents to access their postings unrelated to school, and that's a bit ridiculous if you think about it.
In addition to this blog for work, I have a personal blog on which I post photos and stories. I can understand the district's desire to keep me from promoting it on a school website, and I think we could have a lively debate over whether or not it's appropriate for me to link to it in this post. However, that blog, like this one, is not restricted in any way. Anybody who searches for it can find it, view it, and follow it. Thus, I've given students and parents access to personal postings unrelated to school, simply by doing nothing at all. While the district surely doesn't intend to tell me I'm not allowed to blog about my personal life, the letter of the policy seems to indicate that I have to lock up my entire online life in order to avoid giving students access.
Our Collaborative Team collected each department's concerns and forwarded them on to the Superintendent, who personally met with the team and allayed some of its concerns. He also offered to make some minor changes, most notably the removal of the "goodwill and reputation" language, though he left in "interferes with the work of the school district" and "disrupts the work of the school district." I am not sure what the difference is between interfering and disrupting, but I still find the language chilling to my willingness to engage in frank criticism of district policy. Nonetheless, the Superintendent personally assured the Collaborative Team that the district welcomes honest criticism.
So here's some of mine: it makes no sense to develop policies to protect students and faculty without participation from the faculty. The biggest problem with this policy isn't that it contains some overly broad and confusing language. The biggest problem is that no teachers were invited to participate in its creation, and that's why the final product was so ill-considered and poorly calibrated. The policy was announced several months before it was implemented, and the teacher's union sent it out for legal review, but that was the extent of the faculty's involvement. As a result, the district currently has a policy in place that hinders precisely the initiatives—like this blogging pilot project—that it most wants to encourage.
I don't entertain too many delusions that the heavy hitters in the district hear my little vocem clamantis in deserto here on the second floor, but I do hold onto some hope that, in the future, policies that directly affect teaching might be written with the input of the people who do the teaching.
