Do you use social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook to keep in touch with family, friends and students?

Is your Xanga page an outlet for your creative side?

Does it include fun photographs from vacations and weekend trips?

Or do you prefer to blog about your life, or post poetry?

Do you communicate with students via text messaging?

If you answered yes to any of these questions you may be jeopardizing your career and opening yourself to questions about your relationship with students.

Gone are the days when life outside of work is private. With the popularity of social networking sites and online Web logs, the Internet is one of the first stops for potential employers — as well as students and parents.

Educators in several states, including New York, have learned that lesson the hard way. In several cases, local media outlets, working off lists of new teachers, found Web pages with provocative photos, admissions of drug and alcohol use, and often-graphic blog entries. Some of the reports have led educators to resign, or be fired or reprimanded.

A tenured central New York teacher was fired in connection with racy photographs and content posted on her Internet profile. A Hudson Valley teacher resigned after being duped into carrying on an online conversation, which included the topic of sex, with a student pretending to be someone else. In the Capital District, a teacher was suspended after rumors surfaced of inappropriate photos posted online.

And in February, a Gloversville Middle School principal was suspended for three weeks without pay for sending objectionable e-mails to staff.

The problem is not limited to the Internet. While text messages have replaced e-mail for many in the tech-savvy set, cell phones now have photo and video capabilities and several educators have found themselves victims of secretly recorded videos that end up on YouTube.

With educators finding themselves in uncomfortable or even criminal situations, unions are trying to help. An article that exposed the online profiles of three educators led the Ohio Education Association to discourage all members from using MySpace or Facebook. While NYSUT has not warned educators off such sites, the statewide union provides a brochure, Protecting Yourself, to members and offers a training session on Internet and e-mail safety. (See sidebar)

"Our intent is to educate our members," said NYSUT President Dick Iannuzzi, "We want to make sure educators — and all public employees — can make informed decisions about their cyber-activities with an understanding as to how they impact their professional lives."

A cyber-orientation

In recent years, NYSUT local presidents have found it increasingly necessary to include a discussion about the Web in orientations for new educators.

"We try very hard to tell people to be careful," said Eileen Foss, president of the Baldwinsville Teachers Association, who recommends new educators take down personal pages on social sites. "My advice to new teachers: If you have a MySpace page, you need to get rid of it," Foss said. "I also let them know if they do have a page, I can guarantee that our tech guy has already seen it."

Many educators view the pages as a way to communicate with people of their choosing, mostly family and friends. Educators may also use the sites to communicate with their students, and to post homework assignments or class announcements.

Foss and others are not trying to scare newcomers, but merely to reiterate the role educators play, especially considering that their reach goes beyond the classroom. "We're in a community where I tell members they are going to be the topic of dinner conversation," Foss said.

Selina Durio, president of the North Babylon Teachers Organization, stresses a similar message with members.

"Our approach has always been to try to get newer educators to realize that what they do at home can affect their job," Durio said. "We have a very young staff and a large number of members who were raised in the neighborhood — about 30 percent. We're trying to get them to realize that students will see them outside of school and they will still look at them as their teachers."

Robert Reilly, a lawyer in NYSUT's Albany Office of General Counsel, notes that educators, fair or not, are held to a different standard.

"Teachers are seen as role models in society and one of the qualifications of obtaining and maintaining your certification to teach is that you have good moral character," Reilly said. "So if you do something that reflects poorly on you as a role model at school and brings your moral character into question, you could be disciplined by your district and the State Education Department may have grounds to investigate revoking your certification."

Behavior deemed "conduct unbecoming a teacher" could very well include information posted on a Web site. "Your character is an issue as an educator," Reilly noted.

NYSUT Labor Relations Specialists Chris Chandler and Nancy Phelps conduct trainings on Internet and e-mail safety. Chandler notes "more employers are doing Google searches and turning up things that people thought were innocuous, including teacher MySpace pages that walk the line between self-expression and inappropriate content.

"I've been in situations where an educator has been disciplined when an administrator is contacted by a parent or someone in the community with a concern about something they've seen online," Chandler said. "When it comes to electronic correspondence, be careful what you put out there. Be aware that cyberspace is an open forum."

Protect yourself

Millions of Americans maintain online profiles, and a growing number are falling victim to online identity theft. In separate incidents, students in Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania created fake MySpace pages in the names of educators, posting sexually explicit information and even alluding to inappropriate relationships with students.

Hacking is not limited to personal profiles. With more schools encouraging teachers to post grades, materials and other information online, grade tampering is also increasing.

According to the New York State Bar Association Journal, the average 13-year-old knows how to create and send falsified e-mail using someone else's e-mail address. In Baldwinsville, a 14-year-old junior high school student was caught attempting to access his teacher's grading program. In 2007, eight Fayetteville-Manlius students were implicated in a grade-tampering scandal.

Some tips for using technology safely:

• Limit cell phone communications with students to emergencies. The appearance of impropriety alone is enough to end a career.
• If you use an online program for grading or homework, make sure your password is not something obvious. Never share your password and change it often.
• Google yourself. Go to any online search engine and type in your name. You may be surprised at what comes up. Similar to monitoring your credit report, you must be vigilant. 
• If you find a phony Web profile, notify the site administrator, your local union president and your school administrator. MySpace has a specific link for educators to report fraudulent profiles. 
• Think about closing your online profile.

Proceed with caution

If you feel deleting your Web page is unnecessary, consider making the following changes:

• Do not list students as your "friends." This blurs the lines between teacher and student. Remember, comments left on your page reflect on you. You may also be judged by information listed on your "friends" pages.
• Assume nothing online is ever confidential. You are still vulnerable to hacking and unwanted people accessing your page even when it is listed as private.
• Scrutinize every photo, blog entry and comment on your page. Do you really need a photo of yourself in a swimsuit from a college spring break? Educators — with and without tenure — have been suspended and terminated because of racy photos that surfaced online. Some photos have even made their way into classrooms without the teacher's knowledge or consent.
• Take ownership. A report from the Oregon Education Association found comments left by friends and students were most troublesome. Screen all comments before posting them to your page. And remember, people linking to other accounts from your page may find personal photos or information you don't want shared.
• Censor yourself. The Internet gives many people a sense of freedom to share their thoughts and opinions on just about every topic. Share only information you are comfortable with everyone — including administrators, colleagues, students and their parents — knowing.

Contact Clarisse Butler Banks at cbanks@nysutmail.org

Know your school technology rights

When NYSUT Labor Relations Specialist Chris Chandler started conducting Technology and Union Issues training, he was astonished at the reactions by educators.

"You would be amazed at the jaws that hit the floor," Chandler said. "People had no idea what little rights they have. They really didn't understand that when you use district e-mail, the district owns that e-mail."

The district can access any e-mail message sent through its server, and so can parents and community members.

"The first thing all educators should know is any e-mail sent through a school district server could be deemed accessible through the Freedom of Information Law," said NYSUT lawyer Robert Reilly. "It becomes a record of the school district and can be accessed by anybody and published to the whole world."

That includes school e-mail opened or composed from your home computer.

NYSUT's Technology and Union Issues training, most often offered at regional leadership conferences, includes information on your technology use rights under state and federal law, as well as e-mail etiquette.