BFTP: Blogging and a little common sense

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past.  Original post January 26, 2007. I've been spending most of my "leisure" time this month working on presentations rather than writing blog posts, I'm afraid. Lucky for you, perhaps.

I serve at the pleasure of the school board.

That means I am not affiliated with any organization that bargains for me, offers legal protection to me, or stands beside me if my job is on the line. It's not so bad. Really...

But it was with a bit of trepidation that I read the following opinion:

Blogging 101 Prepared by the PSEA Legal Division January 2007

As a school employee, you must exercise extreme caution when you engage in blogging or other forms of internet communication. Keep in mind that your First Amendment rights can be limited by virtue of your position as a school employee.

If you blog or maintain a web page, you should adhere to the following tips:

1. Minimize the risk associated with internet communication by limiting access to your blog or web page using a "friends only" or similar restrictive setting.
2. If visitors can post to your blog or web page, monitor postings constantly and remove any that are inappropriate.
3. Do not blog or post about your job duties, colleagues, supervisors or students. This will reduce the danger that you might disclose confidential information, share information about a private workplace complaint, or otherwise carelessly or unintentionally engage in speech which could affect your future employment.
4. If you choose to blog or post as a citizen about a non-job related matter of public concern (i.e., the elections, terrorism or environmental issues) take care that what you say will not impede your employer's effectiveness or efficiency or otherwise disrupt the workplace.
5. If you are blogging or posting about innocuous information (i.e., your favorite football team or family genealogy), you still must be careful not to engage in comments that could adversely affect your employer (i.e., damage the employer's reputation) or interfere with your ability to carry out your job duties.
6. Do not blog or post about personal subjects (i.e., dating, romance, or drug or alcohol use). Your blog or web page should not contain any references to sexual subjects, or contain vulgar or profane language or graphics. If your blog or web page was a movie, it should be rated "G."
7. Blogging and posting anonymously does not protect you. Names of bloggers, web page authors and other internet users can be discovered through litigation.
8. Check to see if your employer has any policies regarding blogging or web pages. If so, you should review the policy with your PSEA Uniserv.

In conclusion, you should be aware that if you blog or maintain a web page, you must use prudence and be extremely careful in your comments. You must give the necessary time and attention to the content of your blog or web page to make sure that it satisfies the general principles above.

Please contact your PSEA Uniserv Representative if you have any questions.

When I first started teaching back in the mid-70s, the district I worked for had two rules. The first was that you had to live in the district; the second was that you were to set a "moral" example. And the good folks in central Iowa had a pretty rigid definition of "moral." Not being able to drink a beer on my own front porch rankled me then and it rankles me now to think that my free speech rights might be abrogated if I were banned from blogging.

But then I remind myself that rights are always accompanied by responsibilities.

Here are some things I try to keep in mind when I write for the Blue Skunk. I honestly don't want Johnson vs. Board of Education being studied in school law classes someday.

• Write assuming your boss is reading. That's good (and common) advice as far as it goes. But I know my wife, my mother and my daughter all read The Blue Skunk now and then. (My wife is lobbying me to change how I reference her from the LWW - Luckiest Woman in the Word - to the BBWWLMEWIJ - the Beautiful, Brilliant Woman Who Loves Me Even When I am a Jerk). I assume my co-workers read the blog, as might anyone for whom I might work for someday, either as a regular employee or a contractor. Somehow this doesn't really narrow the scope of what I want to write about, but it does force me to ask questions about language, taste, and approach. Every time I've wondered if I should put something of questionable taste in the blog and did, it's usually come back to bite me. A person can tell. Mostly.
• Gripe globally; praise locally. I don't think anyone really fusses if you express your opinions about global warming, the Iraq War, or NCLB. But you will never catch me dissing a person who lives close enough that he could easily come by and TP my house. Nor would I say bad things about a person who I might then have to avoid at a conference. Even going negative, I try to make it about ideas, not people. I have to admit I am really lucky to be working in a school with people I genuinely think are pretty darned good and with whom I am proud to be associated. I don't agree with every decision made, but I know that the decision was made thoughtfully.
• Write for edited publications. I've been writing professionally for almost 20 years and certainly on a continuous basis since I've been working for the Mankato Schools. A good deal of what I write is opinion and I've even written a several editorials for the state and local newspapers. My boss in the past has shared things I've written with the school board as a point of pride, I hope. Were the district now to react negatively to my blog, I believe it would have a difficult case showing that my writing impedes my employer's effectiveness or efficiency or otherwise disrupts the workplace, since it has not done so in the past. It would be a condemnation of a technology, not of a practice.
• Write out of goodness. I have a difficult time believing that anything you write because you want to improve education, improve kids lives, or improve society will be counted against you. If you write out of negativity - to vent, to whine, to ridicule - yeah, you'll probably have problems. But I am guessing you were probably having problems at work before you started blogging if that is your blog content. In a workplace where dismissing someone for mediocre job performance or poor interpersonal skills is nearly impossible, supervisors are often looking for any legal means of firing people. If you are doing a good job at work, blog. If you aren't, don't blog.

It is our professional duty to share what works for us and ask for help when we are stymied. Blogs allow us to do both and it would be a crying damn shame if the advice of an overly cautious lawyer stopped this flow of information.

Earlier I mentioned that rights are accompanied by responsibilities. Another thing usually must come along as well - courage. Be brave - blog.

Putting this here from Dr. Scott McLeod so I can find it again:

The law basically says that as a public school teacher you can not be disciplined for your public speech UNLESS it

1. pertained to a private matter rather than an issue that is of general public concern (i.e., of interest to the public), or
2. seriously disrupted the working relationship between you and your peers / supervisors.

I’m paraphrasing / summarizing here but you get the gist. See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garcetti_v._Ceballos

How do professionals learn to search?

I had just finished my keynote for the Colorado Association of Libraries in Loveland last Saturday and thought I was home free - I'd fooled people once again into thinking I know where of I speak.

Then a very nice, thoughtful librarian approached me and asked simply, "What resources are available to help practicing librarians learn how to do good online searches?"

And I stood there with an even more stupid than usual look on my face. I really didn't have any suggestions right offhand even though I often inveigh audiences of librarians that they must become the "expert" online searchers for their students and staff.

I can't say I practice what I preach. I am not all that good at searching myself. I know one or two tricks and few search tools more specific than Google, but I don't know that I am any better at finding more specific and accurate information online than a third grader - or his teacher.

So, a sincere question to my Blue Skunk readers - what resources or techniques have YOU used to become more effective in finding information online?

And don't tell me to Google it, please.

BFTP: How to destroy any school library program

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past.  Original post January 18, 2007. This has since gone on to live a happy life as a column and a book section.

For some reason, e-mails like the one below are inadvertently sent to me now and then.  I find them interesting and think other school library media specialists might as well. - Doug

From: "Screwdisk" <sdisk666@inferno.org>
To: "Wormwood" <wormie@terrafirma.edu>
Subject: How to destroy any school library program
Date: Thur Jan 18, 2007 :10:19 -0500
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook 8.5
Importance: Scorching

My dearest Wormwood:

Once again it is my unpleasant duty to report that your job performance in the area of retarding human potential was unsatisfactory during the past year (only two brimstones out of five).  At all the schools in your area, young humans are graduating at higher rate, are displaying a distressing tendency to do more of their own thinking, and are actually seeming to enjoy reading, problem-solving and even, Lucifer Help Us, learning. This cannot continue if we have an ice cube's chance in hell of keeping mankind ignorant, cruel, and brutal.

The single common denominator among all your schools is that they have an active school library program.  Once again it seems you've been reading your e-mail instead being attentive at our staff meetings and have missed ways to cripple the school library program.  Find below ideas shared at a past meeting on how to effectively disable any library program, not matter what its current strength.

The fiendishly glorious thing about library programs is that they depend upon on a single fragile soul - the school librarian. You get to her, the entire program goes up in flames.

You must convince "madam librarian"  to:

1. Think of  the library as her program where she sets all the rules, knows all the best practices, and owns all the materials.
2. Invite people into the library, but when they actually get there, set rules and expectations that make them feel uncomfortable, even unwelcome.
3. Place more emphasis on getting stuff back and keeping it in order than getting it out and into children's hands.
4. Consider the only productive behaviors in the library to be academic in nature. Pursuits of self-interest mustn't count.
5. Assume people who like getting information in ways other than reading are stupid. Oh, and treat them that way.
6. Spend a lot of time making sure the cataloging meets standards. Stay in her back office while doing so. Don't let people say "anal retentive" like it's a bad thing.
7. Make sure she lets it be known that books are superior to technology in every way, under every circumstance.
8. Ban kids taking notes and certainly ban the copy/paste command. Make them work for their plagiarized term papers!
9. Only select and book talk items she likes to read. Make sure she ignores any nonfiction titles. Claim graphic novels are the devil's handiwork.
10. Make sure she has a set of goals that in no way relate to building or district goals.
11. Assume teachers who do not want to collaborate are bad teachers and treat them as such. Assume administrators who do not automatically value of the library are dolts and troglodytes and treat them as such.
12. Always advocate for what is in the best interest of the library - not the library user.
13. Never accept a task that she considers beneath her professional dignity - teaching a class, hosting a study hall, monitoring a test.
14. Develop an adversarial relationship with as many people as possible. Key are the principal, the custodian, the secretary and especially the technology director. 
15. Set as many rules on computer use as possible. Bans all forms of recreational use especially. For first time misuse, take away computer privileges for a minimum of a year.
16. Learn to play good cop/bad copy with her library aide. The librarian is  the bad cop.
17.  Make sure she is very, very fussy about her job title. Just make sure she cares deeply about many things no one else cares about.
18. Consider everything a collaborative effort, and to take no responsibility for that which could be directly attributed to or blamed on her.
19. Develop a good relationship with parents - after she finds out her job may be cut.
20. Whine. At every opportunity.

Remember to invoke the pernicious imps of Fear, Powerlessness and Defensiveness at every opportunity. A confident librarian is among the worst of Our enemies! If Earth is ever to truly become the devil’s playground, nasty concepts like critical thinking, tolerance for a diversity of opinions, the ability to empathize with others, and intellectual freedom must be stamped out faster than prison-made license plates. Allow me to remind you once again that with even the least diligence and effort on your part, libraries which support these heresies can be rendered ineffectual.

Fire up, Wormwood! Fire up! Get these librarians in your schools heading down the wrong path. And do make sure it is "down."

Insincerely,
Screwdisk

With apologies to C.S. Lewis