Teachers and Social Media: Trekking on Treacherous Terrain

By Doug Oakley
Staff Writer
Bay Area News Group
doakley@bayareanewsgroup.com

When news broke last month that Newark teacher Krista Hodges used Twitter to express her desire to stab some of her students and pour hot coffee on them, the questions arose quickly: Aren't there rules about that? Why wasn't she fired? 

The answer is that teachers who use social media are living in the Wild West: Rules are few and far between, and discipline for stepping over the line is a hit-or-miss proposition. 

In Hodges' case, she acknowledged receiving a written reprimand from her school district. After this newspaper's disclosure of her tweets, local police initiated an investigation into the matter. In other cases, teachers have been fired for much less. 

"We're not given any guidelines, really," said Carissa Weintraub, a science teacher at Ygnacio Valley High in Concord and a Twitter user. "At this point, it's sort of a free-for-all and we're learning as we go along. I've heard horror stories across the country about people losing their jobs after posting stuff on Twitter or on Facebook." 

Weintraub added that teachers need to be trained how to use social media "the same way students need to be taught how to use it." 

Newark Unified School District Interim Superintendent Tim Erwin said the district, like many others, has no policy on teacher use of social media nor does it have written guidelines for dealing with teachers who go too far. 

Eric Goldman, a law professor and co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University School of Law, said the drafting of policies is not easy. 

"Some school districts are making rules," Goldman said. "But it requires careful thought. The policy has to navigate between legitimate use of social media and the free speech rights of employees. School districts basically have to tell their teachers not to do anything stupid online. That's the gist of it." 

Or as Ligia Giese, a Berkeley mother of two students in public schools, put it, it's about respect. 

"I think if you're talking about your job, whether it's in public, on the Internet or in any other forum, I would like the teacher to have respect for the students," Giese said. "I couldn't pinpoint the wording of the rule, but I would expect a teacher, like any professional, would speak with a modicum of respect." 

While teachers have the protections of free speech, when they post things on the Internet, be it in blogs, emails or social media like Twitter and Facebook, they need to know they are giving administrators information about their job performance and responsibilities that they would not otherwise have, Goldman said. 

"We all joke about the ways that we could maliciously behave in our jobs," Goldman said. "That's gallows humor. Going online gets problematic. With (Hodges) it was not just a joke, it was a running theme. At some point it crosses over from being a joke to a warning sign." 

Other teachers have been fired for posting much less offensive things than what Hodges wrote. 

Just this summer, according to Goldman's Technology & Marketing Law Blog, a judge upheld the firing of a Pennsylvania teacher who used a blog to call her students "frightfully dim" and "rat like" and said the parents were "breeding a disgusting brood of insolent, unappreciative, selfish brats." 

The court said her speech was not protected because her comments were not a matter of legitimate "public concern," an oft-used standard in cases of free speech rights of public employees. 

"When it comes to government employees, we need to believe they are exercising their discretion properly because they are acting on behalf of the public," Goldman said. 

Last year a New Jersey teacher was fired for posting on Facebook that "I'm not a teacher -- I'm a warden for future criminals!" She sued, asking for her job back on free speech grounds, but was rejected. 

Here in the Bay Area, school districts are grappling with the problem regularly, but none contacted for this story have established a formal social media policy. 

However, the board of the Mt. Diablo Unified School District has written a draft policy that says teachers will be disciplined for posting "inappropriate threatening, harassing, racist, biased, derogatory, disparaging or bullying comments toward or about any student or employee." 

The Berkeley, Oakland and San Jose Unified school districts have not put anything in writing. Nor has the Fremont Union High School District, which runs schools in San Jose, Sunnyvale and Cupertino. 

"We researched this specific issue because of questions from teachers, and the best advice we can give them is use common sense and remember you are a public sector employee," said Cathy Campbell, president of the Berkeley Federation of Teachers. "We also encourage them to not engage in a lot of social media with their students. There are no laws or court cases that clarify exactly what they can and can't do. That's the biggest challenge right now." 

Marisa Hanson, president of the East Side Teachers Association in San Jose, said the California Teachers Association counsels teachers not to have minors as Facebook friends. 

But Newark Unified's Erwin said social media, "when used appropriately, can be a very helpful tool in communicating with students, because that is where our students are a lot of times." 

The more common social media issue, Hanson said, is students posting inappropriate comments online about a teacher -- a situation that may produce a conversation between district administrators and parents. 

In Oakland, school district spokesman Troy Flint said he hasn't heard of any teacher being disciplined for inappropriate social media use, and the district offers "very little guidance." 

"Right now, it's a hodgepodge of practices that vary from school to school," Flint said. "Creating a more universal standard that gives teachers guidance is something we should do. In the meantime, we've trusted teachers as professionals to use social media responsibly."