Friday, December 12, 2008

At Last...

I have my student teaching placement!! I will be at a middle school w/in Pittsburgh Public, and I will be teaching 7th grade Reading and Language Arts. It's so real to me now that I'm starting to get super nervous...

There are so many requirements for a student teacher that I'm glad I never followed through and got a part-time job. It looks like I'll be doing prep work every minute that I'm not in school and I'm a little intimidated by that. I really hope that my cooperating teacher is wonderful. I think I'll need all of the support I can get.

And, I have a dilemma. During our first student teacher seminar, my professor made a point of saying that we had to make sure that we didn't have any crazy "websites" like Facebook or MySpace. I, of course, have both. But I don't think I have anything outrageous posted on either, and both are set to private. Not to mention that I have this blog. But I don't think that anything on the blog account has my full name, and I have tried to keep most things fairly anonymous, so I think as long as I don't mention any students or teachers by name I'll be safe.

What do you think? Do you think I should delete my Facebook & MySpace pages? What about my blog?

I would hate to do it but I don't want to have anything tarnish my reputation this early in the game...

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Didn't anyone ask for clarification on that issue?

You can change the setting of some of those sites, deleting your first and last name so that no-one can even search for you via such things. And disable your blog RSS feed... and all of the search settings there, as well...

Anonymous said...

Oh, and CONGRATS! btw...

Cupcake Blonde said...

Finally! YAY!! And Congratulations. I think you will be okay with MySpace and Facebook as long as they are private. And you can use the suggestions Shades mentioned. As for the blog, you don't use your real name so you should be okay but if you worry you can set up a seperate email address account so that it has nothing to do with anything connected with your name. Or set your blog to private and we will all have to log in to read it. Small price to pay to stay secure and safe.

Courtney said...

You might want to double check with someone that as long as your MySpace and Facebook are private, that they're okay. I don't see why they wouldn't be. And if you have to set your blog to private or move to a new URL, so be it.

So glad that you finally know what you're doing, though! That's got to be a huge relief.

jellybean said...

YAY! congrats! my sister in law just finished her student teaching and is happily working teaching i think 3rd grade now. it will go great! you will be great!
i wouldn't worry about myspace or anything so long as they are private. no one can access them that way. shades had some good pointers though -if you just want to be safely hidden away.
good luck!

Erin said...

Great job Sarah! I am so glad that you finally got your placement! Keep your facebook and myspace. It shouldn't be a problem...but maybe you should take your naked porn pictures off...they may not be as appropriate....;-)

Steelers Wine Girl said...

Shades - I didn't want to ask in front of everyone b/c I knew my professor would think I'm a bonehead for even having one (another generation) and then I completely forgot about it afterwards. Great thought on the RSS thing...I'll have to figure that out!

VP - good idea on the e-mail...I'll change it to my other e-mail address that I don't put on resumes

Courtney - it's definitely a big relief!!

Jellybean - Thanks for the vote of confidence!

Erin - Darn, I guess I'll have to take those pics down...

So I think I'm just going to keep all of my settings on private for MySpace & Facebook and probably change my last name to just my last initial. One of my friends who is a teacher said that's what she did when she was job searching, and then she changed it back later, and just kept everything on private.

Thanks for all of the congrats (though premature - wait until I make it through the semester!!) and advice!