The Internet isn't that anonymous.

What I found about myself after searching my name on both Google and Pipl was that my name was somewhat more common than I thought. There was someone who had music for sale. Another person with the same name as me was a punter and kicker on his high school football team. And the scariest thing of all was my name was linked to a killer in a couple of different news articles. After I tried to refine the search by including my middle initial and state, I found only one thing specific to me besides my blog I just recently created. And that was an OLCC mediation hearing over the suspension of my service permit from March of 2000. (Mcneil_Troy_FO_00.doc - oah.state.or.us)
As for changing something that may have been unbecoming of me as a teacher, I’ve already done a couple things. I changed my profile picture on Facebook and made my profile on MySpace private. Not that I feel anything was wrong with my profile picture on Facebook, but some people might look down on the fact I had a menacing look on my face while holding a knife over a pumpkin, getting ready to carve it. It was for fun for the family, but my wife and I decided to pull it down. I used to write juvenile, humorous things on MySpace too, but decided to stop. I know that once you put it on the internet, it never disappears. So if I can make it at least somewhat more difficult to access, I will.
I do and don’t believe teachers should be held to community standards in terms of their personal lives. As long as a teacher’s behavior is legal, they should be free to do as they wish. Yet, because of the large amount of trust the community puts into teachers and how many students the teacher comes into contact with, just being legal is not enough. Teachers need to hold themselves to higher ethical and moral standards than most other professions. You can’t clock in and out and not be known once you leave the school. A teacher’s behavior stays with them from generation to generation of students. That even includes whatever a teacher may say.
The most interesting story, for me, from the article was about the art teacher from Virginia who posted a video of himself painting with his butt and other body parts. I just don’t get why someone would do that. Would the teacher have done this same thing if it were to be broadcast over a community television station? I highly doubt it. I just think it shows a lack of forethought for people to not think about the consequences of their actions, even if it is in a new medium. A general rule of thumb should more than likely be, if you are going to behave like this in public, what would your grandma say? If you wouldn’t do it in front of your grandma, then you shouldn’t do it in public, or even a medium you students could possibly access.
The only thing I can do to protect myself in the future is just to think and use common sense. What would grandma say?