Week 2- Post 1- Taryn

So my roommate is an Elementary Education major and has already started her student teaching. Tonight, we're sitting on our living room futon in our apartment watching The Hills (I'm thoroughly ashamed), and she gets an instant message from none other than one of her FOURTH GRADERS! In panic mode, she asked me what to do. I told her to add the little girl to a list of "blocked buddies" so that she couldn't be IMed by her anymore. After saving her new settings, my roomie breathed a sigh of relief...But really, how crazy is that?

She first thought that the girl could have gotten it from facebook...(Fourth graders on facebook...seriously?) But that doesn't make sense because she has her facebook set to "private" and goes by her first and middle name instead of the typical first/last. Then she realized that she'd brought her laptop to class with her and her AIM had been open on her screen for when she first opened her laptop one day...She hadn't even been signed on, but her screen name was visible.

There are three incredibly scary things about this situation:

1) How tech-savvy kids are these days: and not just fourth graders...Like it or not, we're already falling behind in the technological department just due to aging. (And we're all in our 20s! How sad is this?) And to top it off, being English Ed. majors doesn't really preach the use of technology. Though we have been introduced to millions of ways to use it in the classroom, English is not the most tech-loving subject.

2) Our privacy is gone: Like it or not, we're being watched. Though most of us are probably going to be most nervous in front of a principal or our university supervisors, we constantly have to be thinking about the students. My roomie said that her AIM screen was open for probably about 5 seconds before she closed it when she first started her computer. I think we just have to expect that there is no privacy in those schools, so anything we don't want to be made public shouldn't be brought to work or posted on the Internet.

3) Student/teacher relationships: I'm not sure if my roomie could get in trouble for this (hence the reason that I've been referring to her as "roomie" this entire post-- instead of her real name), but I know it's a sticky situation. Parents and administration have a hard time defining what's considered "appropriate" in schools. I still have a great relationship with my high school counselor (who is on facebook and has AIM, etc.) and I know that his relationships with kids have been questioned constantly because he's a very warm, likable person to the students. Unfortunately, it ends up getting him interrogated every so often. I think the solution is just to always be professional and make sure you set a good example. Keeping it simple and being interested in your students lives is totally doable; just don't go over the top.