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Technology is great and we know from our research that the vast majority of teens are using it safely and responsibly. But a few are creating problems for themselves or others by what they post online. That’s why we’ve partnered with Jostens to produce a number of useful resources for you to educate yourself or the teens in your life about the pitfalls associated with unwise postings. “Pause Before You Post” is a movement to remind students to carefully consider the consequences of posting something online. Whether they are posting something private about themselves or something hurtful about someone else, the costs can be steep. Here is a short video that introduces the campaign. You can also find a number of other short videos that feature Sameer and I talking about various issues related to teen technology use here.

One of the most popular documents we wrote for this program was “A Student’s Guide to Personal Publishing” which is available here. Jostens has put together a Pause Before You Post Kit that includes posters, pins, flyers, a DVD and CD with videos and curriculum based on our research. For more information about the kit, talk to your local Jostens representative or visit the Jostens web site. Since October is bullying awareness month, it is a good time to remind students to pause before they post!

New Jersey’s updated bullying law took effect today amid controversy and confusion.  The New York Times recently reported on the law and I have received numerous calls from folks interested in my take on certain provisions.  Bullying and cyberbullying legislation has been the topic of much discussion on this blog, and regular readers know that we see a place for evidence-based, fiscally supported state legislation that helps clarify school responsibilities and provides them with the tools to better manage bullying and cyberbullying incidents.  We haven’t seen the perfect law yet, and New Jersey’s iteration is not it either.

New Jersey’s law seems to focus much attention on accountability – not on holding the bully accountable, but making sure school officials take certain actions expeditiously.  There are a series of requirements in the law that designate a very tight timeline for school actions:

• Principal must investigate incidents within one school day of witnessing or receiving a report of bullying
• Investigation must be completed within ten school days
• Results of the investigation must be sent to superintendent within two school days of completion
• Results must be reported to the board of education at the next scheduled meeting
• Parents need to be informed of investigation within five school days of board notification
• Parents may request a hearing of the board, which must be held within 10 days

The impetus for providing a detailed paper-trail and strict timeline for dealing with each incident likely comes from parents or student targets who feel as though their reports of harassment have been ignored, but holding schools to such a firm schedule will prove challenging.  And depending on how each school interprets the definition of “bullying,” staff could quickly become mired in a bureaucracy and be forced to spend more time on paperwork than actually problem solving.

In fact, an interesting aspect of the language in this law is that it explicitly includes single incidents which traditionally would not have been considered bullying:  “‘Harassment, intimidation or bullying’ means any gesture, any written, verbal or physical act, or any electronic communication, whether it be a single incident or a series of incidents…”  Clearly it is important to address all forms of harassment, even one-time incidents, no matter how minor, but to require schools to formally document every single case could easily overwhelm them with paperwork.

The law follows the pattern of other recent state legislation (see our analysis of New Hampshire’s law) in adding language that incorporates off-campus behaviors that substantially disrupt the learning environment at school.  This seems to be one of the most controversial aspects of the law even though nothing has really changed with this.  For decades the standard has been that any behavior, whether on campus or off, that substantially or materially disrupts the learning environment at school is subject to the school’s authority.  This was originally articulated in Tinker v. Des Moines in 1969 and several subsequent Supreme Court cases have applied this precedent to numerous incidents where schools disciplined students for off-campus speech or behavior.  States have simply tried to codify this so that the standard is more widely understood.  This law does not require teachers to police the Internet, but it does insist that they respond when reports of cyberbullying that are disruptive to students at school are made.  Since most schools are already doing that, the only significant change is the amount of documentation that is required within a very short period of time.

In general, much of the provisions in the law are actually positive, and again most schools are already doing many of the elements included.  The major problem is that no money has been allocated to pull any of this together.  For example, each school needs to designate an “anti-bullying specialist” and each district needs to name a “bullying coordinator” (contact information for these folks must be listed on the school’s web page).  Since no resources have been provided to schools to hire actual specialists, these duties will no doubt fall on staff who may or may not have expertise in bullying prevention and response.  Moreover, schools are now required to provide training to staff and volunteers, but information is lacking regarding evidence-based training programs or curricular enhancements.  Therefore, many schools will be forced to create an ad-hoc program or pay for someone to provide programming that might not be effective or informed by research. These mandates are coming at time when schools in New Jersey and across the United States are laying off teachers and essential support staff left and right.  If New Jersey and other states really wanted to send a strong message that bullying prevention and response is a priority, then they would provide resources for schools to implement these policies and practices effectively.   Until then, the new law is only a bunch of words on paper.  Complete details of the law are available here.

Now is the time to start thinking about what *you* are going to do to educate your students about cyberbullying, digital citizenship, online responsibility, and overall safety. A key to any educational effort is consistent reinforcement of the messages you want students to incorporate into their daily lives. Convening an all-school assembly on these topics once each schoolyear is not sufficient. But bringing up online issues even for just a few minutes regularly (daily!) can be very effective. No matter what your area of teaching expertise is, you can talk about digital citizenship. When it comes to educating your students about online issues, there is no need to reinvent the wheel. There are tons of great resources freely available on the web. You already know about our site, but in case you haven’t explored it fully, below are just a couple of examples of activities you can incorporate into your classes.

Cyberbullying Word Find. You can start a discussion about cyberbullying with a fun activity that introduces important terms and concepts to your students. After all of the words are found you can talk about what they mean and how to avoid problems. Or you could separate the word list from the sheet and announce them one at a time and briefly discuss them as they are found! One school we talked to laminated our Word Find (and our Crossword Puzzle and Word Scramble) and used them over and over in different upper elementary classes and the class that solved them the quickest one a pizza party!

Quizzes. We have three short online quizzes that you can use to assess your student’s knowledge about cyberbullying: The Facts about Cyberbullying; Dealing with Cyberbullying; and Addressing Cyberbullying. You can work through these in a computer lab or if personal devices are allowed in your school, you can direct your students to the site to complete the quizzes on their phone, tablet, or laptop. If those aren’t options, you can always print off the quiz and distribute it the old fashioned way! You can have students work in teams and give extra credit for those who get them all correct. After they are done with our quizzes, have each student (or team of students) search reputable sites online to come up with their own questions and answers!

Ideas to Get Teens Involved. In our presentations we talk a lot about how it takes a coordinated and comprehensive community effort to prevent and respond to cyberbullying. Parents, educators, law enforcement officers, faith leaders, and other community partners all have an essential role to play. But so do the teens themselves. There are a lot of great things youth can do to educate their community about cyberbullying – while learning a thing or two themselves. When working with small groups of teens I often ask teams of 4 or 5 students to come up with 2 creative ideas that they could do to educate their school and community about cyberbullying. One idea needs to be something that they *will do* within the next month and the other idea can be something that they would do if resources were unlimited. They always come up with some amazing ideas! One senior once told me that if money were no option he would get the whole school to go skydiving over the community with parachutes that said “Say No to Cyberbullying” on them. Great idea! What ideas do your students have? Get them involved and invested in creating and maintaining a bully-free culture in your school.

Pause Before You Post. Sameer and I partnered with Jostens to create “A Student’s Guide to Personal Publishing” that summarizes the issues that students need to keep in mind when posting information to the World Wide Web. You can use this guide to start a discussion with your students about some of the problems they see when looking at friends’ profiles. You can also take a few minutes to find some examples from the media where teens from your state or celebrities have gotten into some hot water because of what they have posted on the Internet. Taking the time to pause before you post anything online is always wise. If your school orders class rings or yearbooks from Jostens, ask your local representative about a complete “Pause Package” that includes a DVD, buttons, and other instructional materials.

These are just a few examples of how you can use our resources in your efforts to educate your students or children about cyberbullying and related issues. Please do explore the other resources we have for teens, educators, and parents. And let us know how you are using these and what is working! If you have any suggestions for new resources, drop us a note – we’d love to hear from you! We will share some additional suggestions in upcoming blog posts. There are a number of other great sites out there that have resources that we will highlight, so stay tuned! If you know of any, please let us know so we can spread the word. Also, if you are an educator thinking about teaching a whole class on cyberbullying or digital citizenship (at any level), stay tuned for a forthcoming blog post about what we and others we know have done that works.

Do students have an expectation of privacy on their cell phones while at school? The short answer to this is a qualified yes. Whether educators have the authority to search the contents of student cell phones depends on a lot of factors. The key issue in this analysis (that we have raised before on this blog) is the standard of reasonableness. According to New Jersey v. T.L.O (1985) students are protected by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. In T.L.O., the Supreme Court goes on to say that the standard that law enforcement officers must reach to conduct a search (probable cause that a crime has been committed), is not required of educators. In general, the standard applied to school officials is whether the search is “justified at its inception and reasonable in scope.” Of course there is a bit of subjectivity to this standard and what appears to be reasonable for one person may not be for another. In T.L.O., the Court ruled that for a search of student property to be justified, there must exist: “reasonable grounds for believing that the search will turn up evidence that the student has violated or is violating either the law or the rules of the school.” This seems to be the standard by which schools should determine whether a search of a student cell phone is allowable.

There are a couple of cases which have been decided that shed some light on how this particular standard would apply to the search of student cell phones. The case most often cited is Klump v. Nazareth Area School District (2006). In this case, a teacher confiscated a student’s cell phone because it was visible during class – which was in violation of school policy (it accidentally fell out of the student’s pocket). The teacher and assistant principal then searched through the cell phone’s number directory and attempted to call nine other Nazareth students to determine if they too were in violation of the policy. They also accessed text and voice mail messages and communicated with the student’s brother without indicating to him that they were school staff.

The Court agreed that the school was justified in seizing the phone, but should not have used the phone to “catch other students’ violations.” In summary, the U.S. District Court in Klump concluded: “Although the meaning of ‘unreasonable searches and seizures’ is different in the school context than elsewhere, it is nonetheless evident that there must be some basis for initiating a search. A reasonable person could not believe otherwise.”

In November 2010, a Mississippi federal court identified no Fourth Amendment violation when a teacher seized, and administrators reviewed, photos and text messages in a cell phone confiscated from a boy who used it in violation of a schoolwide ban (J.W. v. Desoto County School District, 2010). Of course, the seizure was allowed because the school had a policy prohibiting the possession or use of cell phones at school. The issue in this case was the legitimacy of the search of the phone’s contents, which included incriminating pictures of the student wearing what appeared to be gang clothing.

The court ruled that the school was justified in searching the cell phone: “Upon witnessing a student improperly using a cell phone at school, it strikes this court as being reasonable for a school official to seek to determine to what end the student was improperly using that phone. For example, it may well be the case that the student was engaged in some form of cheating, such as by viewing information improperly stored in the cell phone. It is also true that a student using his cell phone at school may reasonably be suspected of communicating with another student who would also be subject to disciplinary action for improper cell phone usage” (J.W. v. Desoto County School District, 2010).

I personally believe that the Mississippi court got this case wrong. Searching the student’s phone will not yield any additional evidence that he is in violation of the school’s policy prohibiting possession of the phone at school. Seeing the phone in school already sufficiently established that point. The court argues that “…a student’s decision to violate school rules by bringing contraband on campus and using that contraband within view of teachers appropriately results in a diminished privacy expectation in that contraband.” Clearly the court in Klump did not agree with this reasoning as the court sided with the student. And while New Jersey v. T.L.O. established a different search and seizure standard for educators, the Supreme Court did not in this case suggest that any policy violation whatsoever negated any expectation of privacy a student previously held. The court in J.W. seems to suggest that if a student chooses to deliberately violate a school policy, that student should also be willing to shed any other constitutional protections with respect to the contraband. It should be noted, though, that the Mississippi court did attempt to distinguish the facts of J.W. from Klump by saying J.W. intentionally violated school policy whereas Klump accidentally violated the policy. I’m unconvinced that this should be a salient factor. Does it really matter that much if a policy is accidentally or intentionally violated? Given the many apparent contradictions between Klump and J.W. (and other student cell phone search cases), I would love to see the U.S. Supreme Court review this issue to provide much needed clarity to educators and school law enforcement officers.

At both ends of the continuum of circumstances, the law is fairly clear. For example, if a reputable student advises a staff member that another student has the answers to the math exam on his mobile device, this would almost certainly allow for a search by an administrator. At the other extreme, conducting a search of a cell phone that was confiscated because it was ringing in a student’s backpack would likely not be allowed. Of course, there is quite a bit of gray ground in between to cover.

With all of this said, schools would be wise to include a specific statement in their policies that regulate student-owned devices brought to school. The policy should advise everyone that students who bring their own devices to school are subject to a reasonable search if suspicion arises that the device contains evidence of a violation of school policy or the law. Students, staff, parents, and law enforcement officers working in the schools need to be aware of this policy so that no one is surprised if/when certain actions are taken.

What do you think? Given your knowledge of current law, are educators allowed to search student cell phones simply when they are possessed (with the possession being the sole school policy violation)? Or, should they be allowed to search student cell phones only if they can articulate that they reasonably believe that evidence on the phone will reveal another policy violation? Do you believe the laws need to be changed in this area? Increasing numbers of schools are opening their doors and classrooms to cell phones and other mobile devices. As such, it is imperative that clarity is established in this area of case law and policy.

As we work with youth-serving organizations across the nation, we often hear about how the resources we post on our web site are used. I was in New Hampshire last week, and heard that schools there makes laminated copies of our activities for kids (such as our crossword puzzle, word find, and word scramble), and then distributes them to students in classes at various elementary- and middle-school grade levels. Students then use dry-erase markers to fill them out, and then each class competes with other classes to earn the highest classroom-wide “successful completion” rate. The winning class then receives a pizza party! We thought this was a very creative (and environmentally-friendly) way to engage the minds of tech-involved tweens and teens, and get them excited about learning to do the right thing in cyberspace. If you’d like to share with us how you have recently used some of the materials and downloadables we provide, we’d love to hear from you!