In March 2007, a student referred to as J.S. and fellow classmante, K.L. posted a fake profile on MySpace depicting their principle in a negative light, putting it mildly. Showing Principle James S. McGonigle and using a photo that had been taken from the district’s Web site, the profile stated that he was a 40-year-old bisexual man whose interests included “being a tight ass,” “fucking in my office,” and “hitting on students and their parents.”

After the incident, both J.S. and K.L. were suspended from school for 10 days but this caused a parental outrage and J.S’s family filed suit. In court papers, the plaintiff’s team argued that the suspension ran afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court’s historic 1969 decision in Tinker v. Des Moines, which claimed that a student’s speech may not be punished unless it caused a “substantial and material disruption at the school.”

However, U.S. District Judge James M. Munley disagreed, stating, “a school can validly restrict speech that is vulgar and lewd and also it can restrict speech that promotes unlawful behavior.”

As written on Law.com, “In the suit, attorneys Mary Catherine Roper of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and Mary E. Kohart and Meredith W. Nissen of Drinker Biddle & Reath argued that the suspension was unconstitutional because the speech took place outside of school and because it violated the parental rights of the student’s parents to determine how best to raise, nurture, discipline and educate their child.”

Not so said Munley who rejected her civil rights suit. According to the judge, Tinker v. Des Moines “is not a good fit for every school speech situation.”

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There is a fine line between pulling a Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds, Hilary Swank in Freedom Writers and/or Morgan Freeman in Lean on Me versus a 40-something-year-old gym professor with teeny shorts, high socks, a wife-beater, glasses, perfectly parted hair, fifteen dollar cologne, and a little office where he often calls in the cutest middle school-aged girls for “advice on their dribble,” if you know what I mean.

We hear about these perv teachers, read about them, even find ourselves watching a bad Lifetime flick about them but what we see on the news or Lifetime TV is only a quarter of it. With technology at its prime, teachers have discovered new ways of reaching out to students. However, the debate is on full blast regarding MySpace and Facebook accounts. Basically, is social networking sites “socially acceptable” when it comes to a teacher-student relationship?

Randy Turner, a 52-year-old English teacher at South Middle School in Joplin, Missouri, signed up for MySpace, stating that it has improved his ability to reach the kids and help them to better achieve academic success.

“Just the very fact that I have MySpace makes them think, ‘Well, maybe we can talk to this guy and open the lines of communication,” said Turner. “I realized this is a major way of communication for them.”

Turner also claimed that students are beginning to add him as a friend and send him questions about assignments and that is when he realized he was onto something. And naturally, Turner makes us visualize Hilary Swank’s character, a free-spirited and highly passionate teacher who did everything in her power to reach out to her inner city students. Still…while some teachers have all the right intentions, what about the ones who deviate from the “teacher-student” boundaries, if there really are black and white boundaries anymore?

In Missouri, numerous student-teacher sexual relationships (that clearly deviate from even the most liberal state’s grayest of boundaries) have caused state legislator Jane Cunningham to sponsor a bill in the Missouri House of Representatives that would ban elementary school teachers from having social networking friendships with their students.

“I see where they are coming from,” Turner commented. “You can’t argue with people whose intentions are trying to protect children. But, the simple fact is, you take these people who prey on children and they are going to find a way to do it, whether it’s over Facebook or not. Those teachers are ruining it for the ones legitimately trying to help children.”

“There are so many kids who are stubborn against anything teachers say, who are struggling in the classroom and refuse to ask for help,” Turner continued. “When it’s so hard to reach these kids, why would you remove any of the weapons at your disposal to make a difference.”

While those teachers who have impacted their students (later resulting in movies reflecting their great and much applauded effort) was mainly due to their desire to go above and beyond what could be done in a classroom, like everything, there is always a flipside. Where there’s good, there’s bad. And the creepy gym teacher is often times the least of parent’s worries. On a site called badbadteacher.com, long lists of teachers who preyed on their students are displayed in every state and what’s even creepier than Mr. Short-shorts-wearing gym teacher is the fact that the majority of these teachers look normal, conservative, and…well, like the kind of people you’d expect to find at a Republican convention.

That being said, teachers using technology as a form of education is a tough one. Should it be allowed or shouldn’t it? That is the main question here.

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