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The Emerging Playbook: Part IV

Posted By Troy Hutchings, Saturday, December 5, 2020
Updated: Saturday, December 5, 2020

Troy Hutchings, Ed.D.

Senior Policy Advisor, NASDTEC

 

The Emerging Playbook: Reexamining Professional Obligations in a Virtual Classroom

Part IV – Protecting Teacher Privacy and Expression

 

Today’s classrooms do more than house neat rows of desks facing a blackboard. They are sensory rich environments that affirm and inspire while developing a safe and inclusive space – posters, quotations, artwork, banners, and meaningful objects all create a learning and living aesthetic for students and educators alike.

And just as importantly, classroom décor exhibits and champions certain values.

By simply creating and curating the classroom space, teachers become the arbiters of those values and how they are messaged. And this is rarely an issue – after all, embracing the rich diversity that is brought into the building by all schooling participants, including educators, is a good thing.

But what happens when the classroom is reduced to an isolated space on Zoom – when a singular poster now becomes the ever-present backdrop during remote classroom instruction? Or when teachers are relegated to utilizing their personal living spaces as virtual classrooms – livestreaming lessons from the sanctity of their homes when visible expressions of personal values such as religious symbols, controversial books or political posters are the backdrop to instruction?

The virtual classroom creates a visual tunneling – opening the door for accusations that educators may be pushing personal agendas or even indoctrinating children with religious, social or political ideologies.

Consider the Ohio math teacher who recently faced a barrage of public criticism when posters addressing social issues were visible in her remote classroom, or the Texas teacher who was briefly suspended because she personalized her virtual background with several posters – one advocating for inclusivity and another drawing attention to systemic racism.

In Part IV of our blog series focusing on ethical issues related to the virtual classroom, cyber expert Frederick Lane[i] offers thoughts on risks related to the intersection of teacher privacy and personal expression.

 

Don’t Zoom So Close to Me: The Ethics of Educator Privacy in a Pandemic

Frederick Lane

 

Even under the best of circumstances, maintaining a reasonable amount of personal privacy has been challenging for educators. Not only is the job of teaching intrinsically public, but it also necessarily involves extensive interaction with impressionable children. No one should be particularly surprised that school boards, administrators, and parents have a keen interest in the deportment and conduct of the person at the head of the classroom.

The Model Code of Ethics for Educators acknowledges the profession’s expectations and makes clear that educators need to “establish and maintain appropriate … boundaries” (Principle III). It used to be more straightforward for educators to “keep personal and professional lives distinct” (V.A.7). In the privacy of one’s home, it is reasonable to assume that one’s lifestyle choices are free from public scrutiny and, therefore, cannot damage one’s professional standing.

We have learned over the last fifteen years or so, of course, that what happens behind closed doors does not necessarily stay behind closed doors. Thanks to the increasingly toxic combination of personal computers, social media networks, and mobile devices, all of us can share our personal lives with the world. When we do so, we implicitly invite the world to judge our behavior.

And then a global pandemic arrived. With thousands of school districts requiring virtual or hybrid remote learning, educators have no choice but to invite students into a corner of their home. Unavoidably, this further blurs the distinction between an educator’s public role and personal space.

By virtually breaching the walls of an educator’s home, remote teaching raises the possibility that educators will accidentally disclose information that they would rather keep private. And unfortunately, the fact that students have a regular window into their teachers’ personal space all too often means that parents are privy to it as well.

Teachers have both a personal interest and an ethical obligation to minimize the scope of the virtual invasion. The two most important steps are to create an appropriate professional background for virtual teaching sessions and dress accordingly. Flip your camera to view your space as others see it, or better yet, do a Zoom call with a friend you can trust to critique what people see behind you.

If possible, remind the other occupants of your house that you are teaching and that their behavior reflects on you. Try to keep distractions and extraneous noises to a minimum. Perhaps most importantly, always assume that your camera is on and act accordingly.

There’s one final point worth considering. When circumstances are forcing educators to share part of their home with students (and their parents), perhaps it might make sense to be more aggressive about protecting your privacy in other areas. It might be a good time to think about how you use social media and the amount of personal information you share with the world.

 

As Fred pointed out, it was not that long ago that a few basic guidelines went a long way in preventing the blurring of one’s professional and personal expressions.

But remote learning is prompting a reexamination of how to best meet our professional obligations during the virtual classroom era. One example that I have recently discovered is that some districts are now providing teachers and students a common virtual background to use during Zoom sessions – an excellent idea!

If your educational jurisdiction or educator preparation program has created resources or guidelines to protect teachers during the virtual learning era, we invite you to share them with the readers of Ethics and Educators by using the comment boxes below.

In our next blog, and the final in the series The Emerging Playbook: Reexamining Professional Obligations in a Virtual Classroom, Fred and I will be discussing the ethics of technological competence in light of our growing reliance on remote learning tools.

 



[i] Frederick S. Lane is an author, educational consultant, and attorney based in New York. He is the author of ten books, including most recently Cybertraps for Expecting Moms & Dads, Raising Cyberethical Kids, and Cybertraps for Educators 2.0. All of his books are available through Amazon.com or his web sites, FrederickLane.com and Cybertraps.com

 

 

 

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