IRC-Galleria

...here's the address for my weekly blog these days:

blogs.myspace.com/400501151

I write this on the day following the most difficult parent/teacher conference of my career thus far, in which a mother, attempting to defer blame for her daughterÂ’s admittedly inexcusable behaviour, took pictures from this site as evidence against my professionalism and personal character. I state here for the record that I find this motherÂ’s actions to be more immature and inexcusable than those of her daughter in the classroom, and that barring an unexpected full apology for her ignorant and aggressive behaviour I will not respect her as a mature adult, but as a matter of professionalism I vow never to penalize the daughter for this motherÂ’s absurd actions. As my presence on this board has raised eyebrows before though, it seems to be necessary for me to make clear to all exactly why I have an account here and how I use it on a month to month basis.

I have been told that this sort of social interaction with minors is considered to be ethically risky behaviour in a British context at least, and that it somewhat violates social norms for this culture as well. I understand that there is a stereotype that for a divorced, middle-aged man to be frequenting chat sites where large numbers of under-aged girls are fishing for personal attention could have implications. But in spite of that I make no apologies for being here, and I believe that more parents and teachers should set up their own accounts here, for many good reasons.

I first established an irc-galleria account following a discussion with a mother who was concerned about the content of her son’s peers’ on-line discussions that she had stumbled into. She felt that many teachers were far too ignorant of the risky behaviours our students are indulging in on the Internet. Soon after this conversation I had a far lighter talk with one of my female colleagues whose boyfriend had shown here some of the IRC world related to Etelä Tapiolan lukio, including unofficial fan clubs for at least 3 teachers and many nostalgic messages from school alumni. It was on these bases that I set up my own account here. With no reference to my name given, and no direct messaging from me to any of our students or pupils, it took about a week for my presence on this board to become common knowledge among our more tech-savvy kids.

On one level I have experimented with the possibility of meeting people with common interests (cars, music, philosophy) through this network, but frankly it has not been of much use in that regard. On the other hand, as there is nothing secretive about these hobbies, and as my personality is one of my primary tools in my teaching, I am happy to allow students access to this information about me. I have also used this site to contact former students who I have otherwise lost touch with, to see how much of what we taught them in school they find to be relevant now that they have gone out into “real life.” But for this purpose as well, relatively speaking, irc-galleria is not a particularly useful tool. What I have done actively here is to post messages to our students who are more involved politics about organizational matters, to post messages to lists my son is active on when he was hospitalized, and to respond to comments from students about my pictures here. I have at all times kept in mind that anything I post here can and will be used against me.

I believe it is my passive observation here that makes people much more nervous. For better and for worse, having a teacher on irc-galleria is, for many kids, like having a video security camera in what they consider to be their own private space. Herein lies the crux of the matter: THIS IS NOT A PRIVATE SPACE! Children must be made aware that anything they post on this site is something that any genuine pervert in any part of the world will have ready access to for many years to come. Teachers finding out about these things are the least of their problems! Just because they write messages to this board in the privacy of their own bedroom does not mean that what they do here is “in the privacy of their own bedroom.” I believe that if more adults were playfully yet responsibly present on these boards, it would lead to safer behaviour among our kids here. We need to be aware of what our children are doing with these technologies that were not around when we were their age, and we need them to know that we are aware.

Beyond that, I have in fact caught a few kids “with their hands in the cookie jar” so to speak. (Another analogy for being caught doing something forbidden comes to mind, but I will refrain from using it so as not to further scandalize my critics here.) Offences have ranged from using class time intended for subject research to chat with classmates who were at home on sick leave, to setting up groups for purposes of joking about a particular classmate’s sexuality, to bragging about stealing alcohol from a parent’s secret supply. Of these misuses of the technology, only the first mentioned is something which the school has any authority do something about, but all of them are relevant to our task of protecting pupils’ emotional safety and opportunities to learn in our school. As these things have all been done in public web spaces, I make no apologies for pointing them out to colleagues, parents and other authorities. Kids really should know better!

One further issue which deserves mention here is “Jokela”. Irc-galleria received a bit of negative publicity in that regard, but in my opinion entirely without justification. Auvinen’s pain and instability was here to be read by any teacher, health care worker or social worker who cared about his situation enough to bother. Apparently none of them did. Had they done so, in all likelihood that tragedy could have been avoided!

Frankly, during this calendar year I have not taken the trouble to keep up my voluntary patrol of this corner of cyber space. I hope others have. I have been more occupied with buying a house, publishing a book, attempting to guide my oldest son into some post-lukio direction and keeping up with the rest of my basic routines. Thus, if I am guilty of anything here, it is not spending too much time on this “children’s site”, but rather spending too little time here. I hope that rather than looking for dirt on me then, any parent who happens to be looking at this section of irc-galleria is doing so for the same reasons that I have: to be aware of what our kids are involved in and to protect them more effectively. If you *are* here for that reason, please keep up the good work, and please encourage you peers to actively do the same.

Sincerely, David Huisjen, Jr.