Noah Sarna on the issues, cases and events of interest to British Columbia's educational community
Posts tagged tony wilson
Teachers confronting the “new paparazzi”: protect your reputation
Feb 1st
Vancouver lawyer Tony Wilson has an entertaining article in the current issue of Teacher Newsmagazine, a publication of the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation, with cautionary tales of public figures getting caught unaware within range of a microphone (leaving Gregor Robertson’s gaffe [Vancouver Sun] off the list) and how this technology may affect teachers. This is how he concludes the article:
All this is interesting, but what applicability does it have to the teaching profession? A lot, actually.
In February 2021, two teachers at Winnipeg’s Churchill High School got carried away with the moment, and performed a raunchy and suggestive lap dance at a student pep rally in front of 100 students. The fully clothed performance included mock spanking and implied oral sex. A student with a cell phone filmed it and posted it the next day to YouTube, resulting in the suspension and firing of the teachers involved.
So the lesson is this: if you’re a teacher, you’re already being scrutinized minute by minute by your students. They all have cell phones these days. All the cell phones have video and still photo capabilities. You may be their teacher, but they are the new paparazzi. Make one slip up or error in judgment and you’ll find you’re suddenly Brittany Spears or Mel Gibson (but without all the money).
So protect your own reputations. Remember—every cell phone is a camera and every microphone is live.
This certainly puts a lot of pressure on teachers. My sense is that allowing students to record or take pictures of teachers while they teach may easily create an uncomfortable work environment. Unless a student has a good reason (e.g. medical or otherwise) for needing to record a teacher, schools should have policies against students using recording devices in classrooms. This is not because any teacher should be protected if they teach or say anything horrible - there are other ways to deal with that - but because any picture or video or audio recording can be used by students to hurt the teacher’s reputation (e.g. chop up what they say or do and reproduce it easily).
Students today use computers and other devices with modems the way students used to use paper, and it’s incredibly easy to post something. Teachers deserve at least some protection from the silly and often mean methods students use to poke fun. Schools may be liable for not doing enough to ensure the classroom is not a hazardous location for a teacher’s online reputation.
Now, this is entirely different from the university context, where the cost of education increases, the level of classroom time decreases, the teaching material may be more difficult to wade through without oral interpretation, and a student’s livelihood may be more directly affected by getting something wrong. This is different also from online criticism of teachers and professors.
The recent decision in Pridgen v. University of Calgary (CanLII), which involved comments by students on Facebook about a professor, affirmed that students should have a venue for criticising their educators. This is how the Court of Queen’s Bench of Alberta presented the rationale:
I cannot accept that expression in the form of criticism of one’s professor must be restricted in order to accomplish the objective of maintaining an appropriate learning environments. I do not regard this particular kind of expression as being of little value. Students should not be prevented from expressing critical opinions regarding the subject matter or quality of the teaching they are receiving. As an educational institution, the University should expect and encourage frank and critical discussion regarding the teaching ability of professors amongst students, even in instances where the comments exchanged are unfavourable. While certain of the comments made about Professor Mitra were not particularly gracious and might have reflected a lack of maturity, the Facebook Wall does have utility as a forum of discussion. The commentary may assist future students in course selection as well as provide feedback to existing students and perhaps reassurance that one is not alone in finding that they are having difficulty appreciating instruction in a particular course. If Professor Mitra was concerned that she was being defamed, then she could have brought a civil action.
The problem is when the online comments or representations of educators amount to harassment or bullying. In the case of Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board & Seguin v. Lentini et al., the Ontario Superior Court of Justice awarded damages to a principal and school board after students and others who were unhappy with one of the principal’s decisions about athletics created a Facebook group and posted comments accusing him of engaging in pedophilia on school property. Imagine how much worse the harassment could have been if the students and others had access to mashed up audio or video material of the principal or an unflattering picture of him.
I think Wilson’s phrase – the “new paparazzi” – because students more than any other group in our society rely on and function through social media. Schools should acknowledge the implications of this reality for teachers and take the necessary steps to protect them from its abusive possibilities.
Using social media to improve, not impair, your prospects
Mar 10th
Following up on my post from last week, the dangers and pitfalls embedded in the use of social media, like Facebook, are growing increasingly clear. But an equally important issue, which I did not touch on below, is how these tools can be used to maximize their benefits (of which there are plenty!).
Teacher Newsmagazine, a publication of BCTF, recently carried an interesting article by prominent Vancouver lawyer Tony Wilson, who practised intellectual property law at Boughton. He speaks directly to students and educators and advises them on how to use social media to protect, instead of diminish, their online reputation, while reminding us fully of the precautions we should take. Wilson refers to a new area of law emerging on this subject:
The online world has created a new area of law in this age of Web 2.0. Its called Online Reputation Management Law, and it straddles the law of defamation, freedom of speech, privacy law, copyright law, and trademark law. It also involves the non-legal (but equally as important) fields of public relations and crisis management. Many of the legal issues in this area involve Facebook, which has over 350,000,000 users, (including about 90% of all the middle school and secondary school students you and your colleagues teach every day. You might be a Facebook user as well.)
Digital information presents fundamentally different material for publication from any content we have seen before because it is so easily reproduced, and, in part for that reason, once it is created and released it is almost impossible to retract. For better or worse, you do not need a printing press to spread words or images in front of the minds of the many. Copy and paste, linking and other web functions have lowered (or liberated – depending who you ask) the bar for self-styled commentators and editors.
I remember when I was a pre-teen the worst thing someone could do was ask you whether you had a crush on someone while secretly recording your conversation. The possibilities are now endless of how someone can damage your reputation or otherwise ruin your relationships using any number of devices that sell for relatively affordable prices and are operational with relatively unsophisticated levels of training.
But now, like back then, the greater risk posed to your own reputation is yourself. Reproducibility and irretractability of digital information are two basic elements of our web-based society. We deny them, or minimize their significance, at our own peril. Students have broad ambitions; based on their age and the common use of social media, it is relatively easy for a momentary lapse in judgment to damage their career prospects. Similarly, educators, because of their unique role with respect to youth and the advancement of knowledge, have concerns of equal importance. It is essential for both these groups to adopt clear standards, both personal and professional, when using social media.
See here for a pamphlet by BLG on Education Law that contains an interesting article on a user’s guide to social networking that is tailored to school staff.
Lawyers praising teachers
Jan 14th
Tony Wilson, a prominent Vancouver lawyer and a renowned expert in franchise law, wrote a stinging and long-overdue lament to the legal community about how our society values lawyers and undervalues teachers. The column appeared in a broadly distributed publication of the Canadian Bar Association (BC Branch) last month.
Mr. Wilson’s commentary has become a discussion piece in the legal and educational communities. Good for him for putting his platform and position to good use. Here is a flavour of the article:
[Why] is it that society pays me (and you) buckets more money to draft contracts, close business transactions or defend insurance companies than those who are responsible for educating the most important people in our lives?…
It’s all too easy to be seduced by our own sense of self-importance, just because we’re paid a lot of money, or we know how the levers of power work, or because others put a value on the legal profession that, dare I say, is sometimes out of proportion with other vocations and callings. In many ways, teachers are more valuable than lawyers, because unlike us, they don’t talk about changing the world. They do it day by day. Child by child.
