For those of you not familiar with the site, Facebook has “status updates” that users can easily change and use kind of like a “mini blog”. It’s a lot like Twitter — so much, in fact, that you can sync your Twitter updates with your Facebook status which a lot of people (like me) do. The following four updates were all written by the same person. Read through them and imagine who, or what type of person, would have written them. (I have removed the user’s name to avoid any embarassment/conflict.)
“[x] is alone, that’s what she does best!”
“[x] is supposed to be looking to the future but is feeling pretty negative about the outlook….I never dreamed that I’d be almost 30 and not be anywhere close to where I’d thought I’d be in life.”
“[x] says Only six more school days….they can’t go by fast enough- I want my summer break!”
“[x] says You know that saying sh*t happens? Did they ever say it happens every day? Because it does for me….”
what kind of person did you envision? A moody teenager? A depressed goth with black fingernails and matching lipstick? Lydia from Beetlejuice?
Nope. They’re all from Mason’s current school teacher.
Following someone on Facebook is a two-part mutual process; one person initiates a friend request, and the recipient must then confirm the action. When Susan told me Mason’s teacher was on Facebook, I added her. She then confirmed me. So yes, that means I intentionally added this person to my Facebook page. It also means that she specifically approves her students’ parents. She knows who is reading her posts and this is what she writes. It’s not like I was sneaking around the Internet and happened to find these posts; as a parent of one of her students I added her.
I’m not sure what I was expecting — wait, yes I do. I was expecting happy thoughts. I was expecting to hear about upcoming school events. I was expecting to see pictures from field trips and things about the school. I was expecting updates from a teacher; instead, I got updates from a borderline manic-depressive.
Look, I’m not naive. I’m sure there are waiters who think their customers are disgusting pigs and physical trainers who think their clients are lazy and fat, and I am sure that there are teachers out there that don’t love teaching. I just wish I didn’t know about it, especially when it’s my kid’s teacher. I don’t want to know that Mason’s teacher “wishes all of this was just a horrible dream” or is “off to do some soul-searching” (two more recent updates). To be honest I think I’d be a lot happier if I hadn’t read any of the updates; at least then I’d at least have the illusion that Mason had a teacher than enjoyed her job.
I haven’t said anything to the school or to the teacher about the updates. Today Susan said, “if her updates bother you so much, why don’t you remove her from your Facebook page?” And I did, but that’s only part of what bothers me. The thing that bothers me more is, Mason has a teacher that doesn’t love teaching.
I don’t remember a whole lot about my first grade teacher and I doubt years from now Mason will remember much about his. I, however, will always remember her as “the depressed Facebook teacher.”
Is she cute?
I hope this in not to earth shatteringly negative for you, but my first grade teacher was so disillusioned after my class that she quit teaching to waitress at Applewoods. I don’t know if that had anything to do with being my fault, but I turned out ok…mostly.
Scott the Wonder Llama
The Madcap Laughs by Syd Barret (who was awfully unstable as well)
She probably shouldn’t allow parents to see her updates. Having said that, I’m a business owner and I let my clients follow me. I don’t worry about it, frankly. I tweet or facebook what I want.
Can you blame the woman for being ready for Summer? I don’t know about your kids, but mine are chomping at the bit. I cannot imagine dealing with 15 of them all hyped up, counting down the days, etc.
So, she’s a little negative internally, but if she loves the kids. Eh. Who cares, right?
‘Course my friends are jealous of my “who gives a sh!t” attitude about everything, so perhaps I should care… Hmmm….. don’t listen to me ;)
Wow. I’m trying to imagine reading updates from my son’s teachers like the ones you read, and, granted, I haven’t really been in your shoes. I think I would find the comments disturbing on one level, like you, so I agree up to a point.
Yet on another level, it would probably give me a better perspective of her as a person, make me realize she’s human, too. Is that so bad? We all have these images of people in certain roles that really aren’t very realistic, and probably aren’t all that healthy. When we see someone in a different role or with actions or ideas that don’t seem congruent, it shakes us up a bit. But because people are multi-dimensional, at least it’s real. Also, it might not necessarily be better for our kids to have an “illusion” concerning who is with them for so many hours out of the day. Sure, it may not give me the same peace of mind, but it probably does help better prepare us for dealing with “reality,” whatever it might bring.
So why did she add you? I couldn’t say. While my policy is to avoid adding anyone that I “do business” with, maybe she couldn’t find a way to refuse your request as a parent of one of the children she teaches without seeming rude.
Two asides: I know a lot of teachers, and as far as I know, they all love teaching, and yet every single one of them is READY FOR SUMMER. Who doesn’t need a break? Also, just because she’s depressed, doesn’t mean she doesn’t love teaching. If she’s depressed, she’s not going to love anything right now. It sucks she’s depressed, but it happens– people get depressed.
Some people have little or no concept of discretionary posting. If you are going to not keep it school centric or wish to post your feelings or opinions that is fine. Do not let it be known that you have a facebook account or do not accept a friend request from a students parents. What happens when she starts complaining on facebook about a certain student that is driving her to drugs or something like that. People should be aware of the perception of what they have written and the audience that will have access to said writing.
I don’t know why she posts what she does, and like I said, the solution was simple enough (I just removed her — now I don’t have to see the updates). Obviously we all have our own comfort levels when it comes to how much personal information we post online, and it’s not up to me to tell Mason’s teacher where her comfort level is (or, in my opinion, should be). Personally my line in the sand is drawn when it comes to talking about work, or negatively about friends and family. My friend Heather said it best, “if you don’t want it quoted, don’t post it.” Pretty good rule of thumb. Like I said on Facebook, both my grandmother and my boss subscribe to my blog, so before clicking that post button I try to imagine both of them reading it.
I think if I were any sort of “public” figure, I would probably have two Facebook accounts: one public, and one private.
In a world full of Twitter and Facebook and MySpace and Google apps that track the location of your cell phone and a million other losses of privacy (many voluntarily) I suspect these lines between public and private will continue to shift, wiggle, and be discussed. Thanks everyone for your comments so far — I love posting things like this and finding responses from many of my friends all over the country!
I saw a really interesteing book about how My space, face book and all those things have gotten people fired and increased divoirce rates.
regardless, imagine seeing your french teacher on a porn site!!
how would you feel about that? I havent but ive not stopped looking since I was 15.
I often imagine what it will be like when all these college kids with pictures of themselves drinking from a beer bong and showing their boobs want to run for president in twenty years.
It is not my job to judge those who post such pictures. (It is, however, my job to download and preserve them. BOOBIES!!!)
When will people learn? You can’t say everything you think, and you shouldn’t post it on the internet! And I have a problem with calling everybody I know “friends”, and yet I hate to be impolite and not accept a request to be someone’s friend. I accepted one from a cousin’s wife a couple of days ago, only to find out that she’s typing in Danish and I can’t understand a word of it. I blocked her! Facebook is definitely a new experience, but unlike old dogs, I can learn! And my son should not be downloading and looking at anybody’s boobies except his wife’s!
First of all she should show some discretion on what she posts, given her audience. However, I do question your logic regarding how liking your job relates to job performance. You can be completely miserable at something and still be the best person in the world at it. Talent does not equal happiness. As long as the job she does is good, then how she feels about it is irrelevant as long as she is still doing her job properly.
I vehemently disagree with you as well. I do not believe that “completely miserable” teachers are the best teachers in the world. I think her posts show poor judgment and unhealthy bouts of depression, two traits I do not think the best teachers in the world have. I know you love to play Devil’s Advocate, but I sincerely doubt you believe that happiness has no affect job performance. I doubt the best painters, musicians, chefs, firemen, lumberjacks, prostitutes or professional Quake players in the world hate their jobs.
One of the greatest sources of stress and anguish parents have is that we are forced to leave our kids with complete strangers, whether those strangers are school teachers, daycare workers or teenage babysitters. If and when you have kids in the future, I would love to see if stick with your opinion that the mental health and stability of the adults you leave them with “is irrelevant.”
There are athletes that hate playing sports, but they’re professionals and do their job. You might question her professionalism in this respect, and there may be more posts that you failed to display that really show the depth of her problems, but from what you have here there really is nothing that is not what a normal person thinks on a regular basis in my opinion.
Unless you happen to have a job that is basically a vacation, I don’t know very many happily employed people who can’t wait for vacation. Especially if you have to deal with a roomful of kids every day. I don’t care how much you like kids, you need a break from that from time to time. You might be lucky that you have a couple of good kids, but in an entire classroom there are bound to be a few that would get on your last nerve, no matter how bright and shiny you are. You went to school, you know the kids I am talking about.
Not many people are living their lives as they thought they would at this point. Some exceed their expectations and some hit the mark and some fall below. Being honest with yourself that you have not met your goals is not necessarily a sign of depression. I would consider that the first step in moving towards your goals in the future.
As far as the sh*t happens comment, that doesn’t mean it happened at school. There are so many possible reasons for that which have nothing to do with her work. In fact, most her comments might not be necessarily related to her work (except the 6 more days comment. Maybe she is single and saw herself married with children by 30 (could explain the alone comment) or maybe she is in debt.
I already stated that I don’t feel like she should be posting comments that could be taken wrong on a place where coworkers or customers (parents in this case) could see it. She should consider her audience. I just disagree that her comments mean she is clinically depressed or hates her job and is thus a bad teacher.
You may doubt me, but I do not think that happiness is the end all be all factor in job performance. I believe it is a factor in how long you will endure a job you do not like, but I do not believe that you must be happy to do a good job. I hate doing security patching at work, but I can do my job 100% effectively despite that hatred. I will quickly find the first sucker to hand it off to if the opportunity presents itself, but I will do it 100% effectively to that point.
It is irrelevant if it is not affecting her job performance. The key here is this is a problem if there is a problem. You mentioned nothing about how Mason felt about his teacher or how his performance this year has been under her compared to previous years. I would be concerned if I noticed a large drop off in those areas.
We’re just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
Topic 1 – My posting guidelines: I mostly only post stuff on FB that is pretty much meaningless and impersonal when you think about it; never post about work problems, except the fact that I’m traveling or not. I don’t think I would post negative stuff about my mental state either – I let folks around me figure that out on their own. Probably good rules of thumb across the board.
Topic 2 – Teaching: I hope that our teacher in question was just having bad judgement days – we all have bad days from time to time. Mostly, I hope that folks who choose teaching as a profession do it because it’s their passion every day. They’ve got some great minds to work with that need to see that kind of passion for work that really makes a difference. You can go to a lot of other jobs that drop the not-even-enough $40K a year to mold futures, so if you’re not passionate about teaching, go find something else that interests you. That’s my take.
Topic 3 – Boobies: I know Rob’s a boob man – it’s OK. But to clear things up…I have NO idea what he does on the computer!