Tip: Google Yourself. Your students do!
One of the many things I teach my graduate students about in my courses at Teachers College Columbia University is that your students, whether well meaning curiosity or straight up doxxing, will Google you to find out anything they can about you and your personal life. We often forget just how important we are in the lives of our students, and many of them really want to know more about the person that they see in the front of the classroom, or on the podium, every day. Remember visiting RateMyTeachers.com? Your students still do. So take some time right now, if you haven’t done so recently, to enter your name in quotes into Google and see what results come up. You just might be surprised just how much information and photos are available online.
Here are some of my suggestions to help you keep your personal life private. In my opinion every educator, especially those in public school settings, should take these steps to protect themselves from curious minds:
Make all of your social media profiles and pictures private. Now. Many times the photos that you post to your social media accounts allow you to choose whether those photos are public, or whether they are only available to your friends, or friends of friends. If you find lots of photos from your social media accounts in Google results, go back and change the privacy settings on each photo and they will eventually disappear from search results.
Remove your name (if you use it) from those profiles entirely. For example., if you have a Facebook account and you use your real name, change it to something that will make it difficult for your students to find you. For example,. instead of using James Frankel, change it to James F, a nickname, or even initials. When you change your profile name you don’t lose any of your friends - they’ll still see all of your posts, but it will make it MUCH harder for students to find you.
If your real name is associated with a music program account on something like Instagram, remove your self from the group, create a professional profile, and add that account to the Instagram channel. By having a professional persona associated with the account, and restricting what you post on that account only to program related posts, you remove your personal information, photos, relationship status, etc.
NEVER befriend students on social media accounts. EVER. Nothing good will come of it. You aren’t their friend - you’re their teacher. If you really feel strongly that you want to stay in touch with your students after they graduate, use a professional profile. Remember that if you use your personal account, students can see your friends, including your fellow teaching colleagues.
NEVER befriend students’ parents. EVER. If you have a parent organization in your school, like Band Parents, and they run a social media account to share photos or information with students, only add your professional profile to that group.
If you do find content online that you really don’t want your students to see, Google has a process for you to remove those results from search results. Visit their page on the subject to start that process.
Consider deleting social media accounts that you no longer use. There is almost ALWAYS a record of those accounts online - even YEARS after you created them. Believe it or not, your MySpace account is still online if you never deleted it,.
You might think that this advice is a little extreme, but I cannot stress enough how important it is in my opinion to keep your online personal life separated from the students you teach. If you feel the need to tell students stories about your life, your family, your childhood, etc. tell them in class and leave it at that. I promise that if you take my advice, it’s a win win all around.
