From one of my students — Page 3

Oh, and more on topic: YAY, for Sondheim! I got into Sondheim when I was 16, after being asked to sing "The Miller's Son" in a benefit performance of all Sondheim music. I was instantly hooked. Then, I was lucky enough to get cast in Company my freshman year of college - at 17 - which made me love Sondheim's work even more. So, I'm one of the few who didn't find him inaccessible, I guess...

adam -- I understand where you're coming from. Like I said, I'm VERY open about the fact that I make myself available to the kids online. Believe me, most of the kids would rather NOT talk to their teacher online. Those that do, their parents always know about it. I also never initiate an IM, unless it's SPECIFICALLY a school thing (like giving my asst. director the stuff she needs to do). Honestly, IMing isn't all that different from providing an email address. Records can be kept of either. Either CAN be faked if that's the intention of someone. If I ever even came CLOSE to a situation (either via IM OR email) that could potentially cause a problem (and I haven't in four years), I would absolutely have a record of it on my computer myself. If a kid should choose to create a fake conversation, well, either way there's not much that you can do about that, whether you give out your IM or not. Anyone can have any IM name - for a student to fake that (espcecially if they have any form of an email name for you) is VERY easy. It's really a matter of how YOU handle yourself. I only deal with the kids in a professional manner, online and in school. You're honestly just as likely to have a kid "report" you for something you did in school, as they are for making something up you said online.

I can't tell you how many times a kid has IMed me with a question about an assignment or an upcoming quiz or something and ended up helping their grade because they were able to ask. The way I see it, the internet is not going away. It's a tool that we as educators SHOULD be using. Yes, there are creeps out there who would abuse it, but hopefully the schools would have enough sense to not hire these people. Had my supervisor told me "don't do this any more" I would have stopped. She knows how I use it, and she knows WHY I use it. Same with the parents of the kids.

While I understand where this is coming from, I think our society has become so sensitive and so guarded, that we can't even trust people who we SHOULD be trusting - our teachers. It's sad that this has gotten the reaction it has, while there are thousands of kids in homes being abused every day, and because those abusers are parents, nothing is done/said about it - but a teacher with nothing but good intentions to help his students is automatically a target of suspicion for the simple reason that he chooses to communicate with them.

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I would suggest that anyone, no matter how innocent or well-intended his or her mentoring (via e-mail, IM, or any other personal correspondence with a minor student that cannot be addressed publicly or in the classroom)) read "Hands", the first vingnette in Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio".

The disturbing truth is that we now live in a time where some individuals see malfeasance in the most benevolent gestures.
There are some REALLY paranoid parents out there that are obsessed by unfounded fears that menacing figures lurk around every corner.

It is not uncommon fo school authorities, to protect themselves from litigation, to trample on the due process of accused individuals and to terminate such individuals after reckless investigations--based solely on the suspicions of a parent.

It sickens me because the wrongfully accused is often left psychologically scarred and without any real legal redress of the matter.

It also saddens me that such rampant paranoia exists. It diminishes the ability of the exceptional teacher (i.e., Anderson's Wing Biddlebaum) to change lives for the better.

I knew one such man very well in real life. His story of persecution and false accusation is one of the saddest stories I know.

Hawker, I understand that truly, sometimes paranoia is misplaced. However, when I was young, I was in a situation where one of my friends ended up being abused by a teacher. It started very innocently - that teacher's door was open during lunch and this student (among others) would stop by during lunch to talk about music and theatre. But this teacher gradually found more and more ways to be close to this student, and nobody said anything, so the situations ended with the student being asked for sexual favors by the teacher. There has to be distance, I'm sorry, but that's how those things start.