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It is not often that students are charged in criminal court for their participation in bullying.  But that is what happened this week.  As has been well-publicized, 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley, Massachusetts, committed suicide in January after experiencing extreme levels of bullying from her classmates.  After conducting a thorough investigation, District Attorney Elizabeth Scheibel announced that nine teens who were implicated in the bullying have now been charged with various crimes, including: violation of civil rights, criminal harassment, and disturbing a school assembly.  Two male students have also been charged with statutory rape.  We will closely follow this case through the courts as it represents an extreme response to an extreme incident, and may well serve as precedent for future cases.

No matter how you view this case, it is tragic.  A 15-year-old girl took her own life after what appears to be relentless emotional and psychological bullying from her peers.  Unfortunately “bullicide,” as it has been termed, is not altogether uncommon.  Many parents experience a horrific void for the rest of their lives after losing a child to suicide stemming directly or indirectly from experiences with bullying.  Adults who dismiss bullying as simple “kids will be kids” behavior or a “rite of passage” should pay close attention to these worst case scenarios.  I have been asked many times by naïve adults over the years: “What’s the big deal, it is only text?”  I simply tell them to ask John Halligan or Mark Neblett or Debbie Johnston or now Anne O’Brien Prince, or any one of the other parents who have had children take their own lives as a result of bullying.  It can take an unimaginable toll on the loved ones left behind.

While the bullying actions of the teens involved are reprehensible, I am interested in where the adults were during all of this and what their response was.  I am especially interested in learning more about what the school (teachers and administrators) knew.  There is conflicting information in the media reports about whether administrators knew about the bullying, and the specific actions that were taken.  The law is clear that if it can be shown that schools are ‘deliberately indifferent’ to harassment, they could be found liable for damages.  Burying one’s head in the proverbial sand and pretending that bullying isn’t occurring is not a legitimate response.  Not morally, and not legally.

If parents, teachers, and administrators would have identified and responded to the bullying of Phoebe Prince in a meaningful way, the loss of life may not have occurred.  If you are an educator or a parent, don’t think that your students and children are safe just because bullying is not a major, visible problem in your school.  Be proactive about educating youth regarding appropriate behaviors and empower them to let you know about any actions or interactions that may compromise the safe and secure environment that should be in place on campus. Teens are reluctant to tell adults about their bullying experiences because they are afraid it will only make the situation.  Parents and educators need to present a clear and unified front against all forms of bullying, and let would-be bullies know that disciplinary action will be taken.  While I am not convinced that criminal action is the most appropriate course to take in all cases, it certainly sends a strong message to teachers, parents, and students.

Let’s return to our multi-post (here, here, and here) discussion of student and teacher interaction on social networking sites or in other online venues. Social networks such as Facebook and MySpace are primarily for socializing. “Socializing” involves interacting for social purposes, and “social purposes” are those marked by friendly companionship with others. It seems, therefore, that school staff should avoid socializing with students in these environments, because educators and students arguably should not be engaged in friendly companionship.

There are some significant concerns with the possibility of students and teachers having this kind of interaction, including the issue that students flirt. If a student were to send a flirtatious message to a staff member, that staff member may be in serious trouble. If the teacher responds to the message warmly, he or she faces the accusation of sexual solicitation. If the teacher turns the student down, he or she faces the possibility of revenge.

Another concern is that the staff member participating on a social networking site will become a “guarantor” of all friends, meaning that if a teacher “friends” some students but not others, it could create a perception that those specific students are favored and may receive preferential treatment (such as a better grade than the others). Relatedly, anything performed online by a public school employee – including information and images posted on social networking sites – will be used to judge the character of that individual. There is also the concern that the friends of the staff member may post unflattering information or tag inappropriate images of them which will quickly be used to prompt one major question: “Is this the kind of person we trust to be responsible for our children?”

Ian Defeo, a substitute teacher in Cape May, New Jersey was judged by online content after giving one of his students a sticker with his band’s logo which also had the address to his MySpace page. The student then visited the teacher’s MySpace page which contained his band’s music videos containing explicit lyrics and one video that contained a brief moment where a woman was exposing herself. The school deemed this content inappropriate and therefore fired him, confirming that school employees can be disciplined for off-duty conduct if the school district can show that the conduct may have had an adverse impact on the school. Non-tenured teachers, like Ian, have even fewer protections.

All of this said, I believe school staff should be able to communicate with students regarding class work and school activities through a school-based Web 2.0 environment and district email system (sometimes also termed a “walled garden” approach). These are school-related communications in which distinctions of status are professional maintained and not socially blurred or distorted. Most communication through school-based means are monitored (for example, all communications are CC’d to an administrator or stored in an accessible database for review and archival) and provide a safer means of interaction between teachers and students. My hope is that more and more of these approaches will be implemented and, more importantly, gain visibility, traction, and usage among teachers and youth.

Referring back to the article in Education Week that I wrote about in my earlier post, Terri Miller, the president of the group Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct, and Exploitation, says “policy makers should not enact reactionary legislation regarding contact between teachers and students. What they really need to focus on is training in proper boundaries.” Overall, the message to school staff members should be: Think before you act/post. Never send or post, or allow others to send or post any material online that will raise questions about your character or values. Another wise practice that seems critical to implement is to always communicate with students in a professional manner, even if you are using privacy protection features on social networking sites (as privacy protections will not necessarily prevent disclosure of the existence and content of these interactions).

Always exercise extreme care when communicating online with students and if at all possible, avoid socializing. These measures, along with district policy that preempts the possibility of inappropriate relationships developing online between staff and students, seems the best way to go.

Sameer and I have talked a lot about this issue in recent months, and while we both basically agree that teacher-student interactions online are risky business, we struggle with how to best approach the issue.  Earlier today he posted his thoughts on the issue.  I would like to take this opportunity to re-articulate mine to continue the dialog.

As I have argued here before, most will agree that a lot of value could come from teachers interacting online in a professional/educational manner with their students.  Again, assuming teachers and students both establish and maintain appropriate boundaries, these interactions could be very positive.  The most serious risk would be if teachers failed to preserve proper limits or if students misperceived the online attention as something more than educational.  In his earlier post, Sameer points out several terrible examples of these – though we all agree these are extremely rare.  Of course these potential concerns are also present in off-line communications between teachers and students that occur as well (both in school and outside of it).

To be sure, teachers should refrain from friending students on social networking profiles they use for personal purposes.  Clearly separating their work and personal lives is important.  Moreover, teachers have an obligation to intervene if they see inappropriate content or evidence of a violation of school policy (or the law) on a student’s profile.  That is a cost of engaging in online communications.

Instead of prohibiting good teachers from utilizing all available tools to educate their students and promote their healthy development, focus should be placed on informing both students and staff about these concerns and fire or discipline teachers who engage in inappropriate behaviors, no matter where the occur.  Sameer theorizes that online interactions make it easier for inappropriate relationships to develop between students and staff.  That may be true, but we shouldn’t hold that against the vast majority of great teachers who will do the right thing.

Schools probably should have a clear policy that establishes the professional standard in online student-teacher interactions.  But they shouldn’t outright prohibit it.  That said, many teachers may feel, for whatever reason, that interacting with students online just isn’t for them.  Either way, it should be their choice.  But they need to be made aware of the issues so that they can make an informed decision.

Sameer and I agree that this issue is complicated and demanding of public discourse.  You have our thoughts, what do you think? Here’s another poll!

As we have previously discussed, a recent article published in Education Week entitled Policies Target Teacher-Student Cyber Talk suggests that some educators and pupils are informally connecting and chatting online with increasing frequency, where relatively innocent interactions may have the potential to escalate into inappropriate relationships. While such cases seem to occur rarely, a few recent ones are worthy of mention.

For example, Gianfranco Maucione, a former high school math teacher and soccer coach in New Jersey, was arrested and charged with criminal sexual contact, child endangerment and official misconduct after exchanging sexually-explicit pictures and text messages with a 16 year-old student and instructing her to touch herself in a sexual manner. In another incident, Christy Lynn Martin, a former middle school teacher, was sentenced to five years’ probation for sending pornographic images to one of her eighth-grade students, whom she called “her husband.” In another instance, a former teacher was arrested for exchanging hundreds of graphic texts and emails with a student. In an even more surprising case, a former teacher was arrested after exchanging over 400 sexually explicit texts and having hour-long phone sex calls with a student.

These cases should open the eyes of school staff members to the risks and consequences that interaction with students via nonschool-based electronic mediums may possibly bring. Apart from the devastating consequences on the reputation of a school district, as well as civil liability, educators who abuse these technologies may lose their job and/or license, and be subject to criminal prosecution and even life as a registered sex offender.

Louisiana has enacted a new state law requiring all school districts to formulate and implement policies which require documentation of every electronic communication between teachers and students made through a nonschool-issued device, such as a personal e-mail account or a cell phone. This documentation process consists of filling out an electronic form within 24 hours of the interaction, which will be sent to the school administration explaining the reason for the contact. Under the new law, parents also have the option of prohibiting any communication between teachers and their child by means of personal electronic devices.

Personally, I think this law is not a great idea. It will have a trivial deterrent effect, and will be unenforceable in many cases. Electronic communications between teachers and students will largely occur on personal accounts and personal Internet connections and cannot be proactively policed or monitored. The documentation process may help provide a paper trail, but I feel that administrators will get bogged down attempting to review these communications a timely manner to prevent the development of improper interactions.

Finally, just because parents have the option to “prohibit” communication between teachers and students, doesn’t mean they will, or that it will do any good. Parents might be hesitant to do so with the concern that their student would miss out on learning and educational opportunities that peers are receiving. Even if they do, it seems a very nominal measure with little, if any, teeth. I will continue my thoughts on this issue in a future blog post.

Sameer and I are just putting the finishing touches on a paper that examines the social networking behaviors of adolescents who are on MySpace.  For the past five years, we have annually taken random samples of MySpace profiles and analyzed them for content to ascertain any changes in adolescent participation and information sharing on the site.  We have published two papers reporting results from this research, and are poised to submit another to an academic outlet in the next week or so.

Because it takes SOOO long for academic research to make it into print, we have decided to post some preliminary results here.  This most recent paper compares a random sample of over 9200 profiles reviewed in 2006 with a random sample of around the same number reviewed in late 2009 – three years of dramatic changes in the landscape of online social networking.  Most of what this research has uncovered is not altogether surprising; it basically supports what most who follow adolescent use of these interactive platforms already know.

First and foremost, teens (and many others) are simply abandoning MySpace.   In 2006, 6.4% of the profiles sampled had been abandoned or deleted.  In 2009, that number was 35.5%.  In 2006, over 40% of the profiles were ‘active’ – meaning accessed within the previous 7 days.  In 2009, that number dropped to about 18%.  Finally, about 60% of the teen profiles sampled had not been logged onto in over a year.  In our opinion, this trend is unfortunate because MySpace has been an industry leader in promoting safety and responsibility on its site—contrary to the opinion of many parents and most state attorneys general.

When looking at adolescent participation on MySpace in more detail, the initial findings are telling.  Significantly more teens now set their profile to private (39% in 2006; 82% in 2009).  Briefly, significantly fewer teens now have public profiles which: 1) reveal pictures of friends in their swimsuit or underwear; 2) contain swear words; 3) include evidence of participation in adult-oriented behaviors such as tobacco, alcohol, or marijuana use; or, 4) report information about which school they attend.  In general, the results suggest that teens are being increasingly more selective and discrete about what they share and with whom they share it (at least on MySpace).

If you would like more information about this research, feel free to drop us a line and we would be happy to answer any questions you have.  Stay tuned to this blog as we will post the final paper when it is ready for distribution.  The earlier papers from this study, which appear in the Journal of Adolescence and the most recent issue of New Media and Society, are available.  If you have any trouble finding them, just email us and we can send a copy your way.